


electric exhale

by chailattemusings



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:11:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5805727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chailattemusings/pseuds/chailattemusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys had hidden his siren powers his entire life and clawed his way into Hyperion on pure skill and a good amount of luck. But Handsome Jack puts him on a leash and drags him to Pandora to find a new vault, careful to keep Rhys' electric wings clipped. </p><p>Rhys doesn't expect to care about Handsome Jack's work beyond the dollar signs, or to learn the truth about Pandora's next vault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Vaughn was pacing. He didn't pace unless he was _pissed_. An upset Vaughn would purse his lips and park himself in front of the television to drown out the source of his misery. An angry Vaughn would go silent and petulantly wander the apartment for hours, from the kitchen to the living room to his bedroom and back around. When Vaughn was upset and angry and frustrated all at once, he paced, rapid steps, back and forth in a ten foot line that would have burned a hole in the floors if he went any faster.

Rhys watched him from a stool in the kitchen. “It's not that bad,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

“Yes it _is_ ,” Vaughn said through grit teeth, hands tight at his sides. “He _demoted_ me, Rhys. That fucking jackass demoted me!”

“It's–” Rhys swallowed, his throat tight. “I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry,” Vaughn said, monotone. “You're not the one that got demoted because your boss thinks you're embezzling money. The only reason I didn't get _fired_ is because he doesn't have any proof.”

“I'll talk to him,” Rhys tried.

“He doesn't know you!” Vaughn threw up his hands, tension coiling in his shoulders like snakes around rope. “Listen, man," he grit out, "shit happens around here, people die, the sharks in the water are waiting. This is . . ." He stopped, sighing out all the weight of his body and slumping like jello. "I didn't expect it because I'm actually good at my job, but it's a bump in the road.” He leaned over the kitchen counter opposite Rhys, his arm pressing up against Rhys' metal casing. “You've _gotta_ stop bypassing accounting with my credentials.”

Rhys nodded along, staring at the counter, at the way Vaughn's skin contrasted his arm. The Hyperion Yellow casing made Vaughn's skin look strange in the reflection of the metal. 

“Yeah,” he said, after a long moment. “Yeah, I'll leave your account alone. It just makes searching the records easier. Accountants have deeper access to the money flow than I do.”

“You're a data miner,” Vaughn pointed out. “They give you all kinds of shit to look at.”

“Not financial records,” Rhys said. “Those get passed over my head most of the time. I think they know how badly I want to run this place. They smell fear.”

Vaughn's brow wrinkled. He stood, snorting derisively, relaxing after his explosion. “More like they smell your weird confidence. None of this shit fazes you.”

Rhys gave him a small smile and laughed quietly. “I guess so. Being a great hacker does that.”

Swinging around the counter, Vaughn leaned his head on Rhys' shoulder. “Another demotion and I won't be able to afford to spot Yvette lunch. If I see any more activity on my ID that isn't me, I'm kicking you out and letting her move in instead.”

“She hates your snoring,” Rhys said simply, reaching up to pet Vaughn's hair.

Vaughn's anger– his upset and anger and everything else– had only started recently, since he and Rhys had decided they wanted more than what Helios had to offer. There were a million ways to cut throats and shove their way up the corporate ladder, but a lot of it involved knowing the right people, or pushing the ones who knew the right people out the airlock. Rhys wasn't a murderer and Vaughn had gagged at the idea.

So they'd started another route.

Shoving Vaughn off of him, Rhys jumped down from the stool, catching the fridge when he slipped on the linoleum. Socks were not conducive to walking on tiles but Rhys' slippers were in the wash and he refused to go barefoot. “We'll be fine,” he said. “People get fired for minor accounting errors every day. You're too good at this, they'll promote you again in a month.”

“As long as they don't notice my ID accessing Pandoran records fifty times in a week,” Vaughn said, crossing his arms. “You _know_ Handsome Jack protects those like a hound dog.”

“Eh,” Rhys shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “It's the easiest way.”

“Easiest,” Vaughn repeated, a bit of petulance left like the final burning embers of his anger. He turned, grabbing his keys from the bowl on the counter. “I'm going out,” he said. “If I'm not back by eight, call Yvette.”

“Eight o' clock, oh boy,” Rhys said, grinning. “Gonna be a party animal tonight?”

“Eight _AM_ ,” Vaughn said, and slammed the door behind him.

All right, so making up hadn't been that easy, but at least Vaughn wasn't blaming him. Rhys pursed his lips and shrugged, opening up the freezer and taking out a tub of ice cream.

If Vaughn had caught him indulging after a lecture like that, he’d put Rhys’ head on a platter, but he'd be gone for hours, probably stalk down to the bar and have one beer before it got to his head and he cooled off at a nearby cafe. Rhys slammed the freezer door shut and grabbed a spoon, ready to sit on the couch and channel surf until the ice cream was gone.

Vaughn stayed out until two in the morning, and Rhys only knew that because he slammed the door again, the sound loud even muffled through Rhys’ bedroom door. In the morning Vaughn would be working for more hours and less money, so Rhys didn’t say anything about the relentless banging as Vaughn smacked cupboards shut and banged his own bedroom door with the finality of an avalanche. He'd get promoted again soon; nothing set Vaughn back for very long. Rhys fell asleep again shortly with that thought in mind, though the guilt didn’t go away when he woke up.

He hadn't meant to get Vaughn demoted. Searching for mining records and trades on Pandora was a lot easier when you had a name and password and didn't need to get around the firewalls. Going around security exhausted Rhys and he had a hard enough time keeping a low profile.

Now he wasn't going to have a choice. He and Vaughn weren't going to wait around another ten years to get a less shitty job and maybe have the chance to boss a couple people around. They'd played the rat race and everyone in it was either struggling to keep their heads above water or had already drowned.

Everyone, that was, except for Handsome Jack. He was the exception to every rule.

As he sat down to start work, Rhys glanced at the posters in his office, the powerful stance commanded by their CEO. He might believe that Jack had only done those poses for the posters, that the persona was put-upon, but he'd seen Jack out and about in the halls with that exact posture, yelling at anyone who got in his way and slamming down cups of coffee like they were water. He exuded power like exhaust fumes. 

He was everything Rhys wasn't, and all that he wanted to be.

The first step to getting there, unfortunately, was to go right under Jack's nose and play the game that Rhys hated the most.

Turning on the computer, Rhys rolled down his sleeves and blinked a few times, waiting for his ECHOeye to boot up. It wasn't strictly necessary but having it on made him feel more connected to the technology, more able to lose his human self.

He breathed deep and drew up strength from within, lighting a match in the center of his chest.

It was like slipping on a worn glove that had gone stiff from disuse. It was hard to even know if he was doing it right, at first. His flesh arm felt warm, like his metal one got when it was running too hard. There was a faint burning sensation under the skin. Rhys looked down at it to see the pale glow of his tattoos.

They'd been covered up, smeared with make-up from his neck down to his wrist, but when he started using his powers even the thick paste of cover-up couldn't keep them hidden. They were like a beacon, gleaming with fire hot light that shone over Rhys' desk, over his face as he stared, and not for the first time he was glad to have his own office.

The heat wasn't like a fire, exactly. It twinged and tickled and sometimes even sparked, making Rhys flinch when it struck him suddenly, a sharp lance up his arm and into his ribs.

He focused on his monitor, watching all of the programs start. He brought up the local browser and logged in to their system, letting out a long, slow breath. The power seeping slowly to the surface was like a pillar of wind, crawling through his chest and down his arm, his leg, coiled contentedly under the skin while it waited for Rhys to use it.

Pandora was the biggest source of income for Hyperion. Their weapons and tech were sold to the people down there and Rhys had an idea of the money they got from that, but it was nothing compared to the eridium mining. The strange, alien substance, brought up from Pandora's depths in vast mines that were spread out all along the planet's surface, sold for staggering amounts to the right people, and its use in weapons gave Hyperion the kind of superior stock that made them the number one weapons manufacturer in the galaxy.

That was where he and Vaughn would find their money. If they could slip themselves into a good eridium deal and pocket the cash, they'd be set for the rest of their lives. Yvette, too, if she wanted in. She knew about their scheming but had never seemed as excited about it; she would rather stab people on the way of the corporate ladder and put herself in a nice seat at Hyperion. Fine by Rhys; she could always come and visit them on one of the Edens when he and Vaughn settled down in a nice mansion. 

He could feel his powers uncoiling, stretching and working their way into the system, rushing through his veins in crashing waves that made every breath taste metallic. Seeping into the system was like sinking into a pool, quick and cold and enveloping him, stealing his air away to replace it with electric fire and flashing numbers.

The data had confused him once, the layout looking sporadic and spacious, like drifting through an outer space where the stars were made of ice instead of fire. As a child he'd panicked about it every time he accidentally let himself go too far. But he was a data miner now and he could read the patterns, pick out the pathways until he found the thread he wanted and followed it.

Anything and everything hinting at eridium was marked in the system, classified in subfolders and files that only certain people could access. R&D and medical had special permissions but even that only went so far. Rhys could get in, but digging deeper took better access.

Which was where his powers came in.

His tattoos were glowing hot under his shirt but Rhys could already feel himself on a roll, striking through pages of code and sweeping away swaths of information. At the back of his mind he could feel something tingling, something near his spine, but he ignored it, looking for keys, clues that he could use.

A flag caught his attention. He hurried toward it. It was a warning about deeper access but Rhys wound around security like a dancer, tiptoeing over the tripwires until he could feel himself bypass it, skipping past firewalls with ease. The security at Hyperion was top notch, but Rhys had worked in it for years. He knew the tricks, even if bypassing them left him aching and sore at the end of the day.

There was some information about a mining quadrant in the southern hemisphere of Pandora, a reported accident. That wasn't unusual; people died every day doing Handsome Jack's dirty work. The messages were short and looked panicked, going back and forth in a sequence. Like a message board but it was different . . .

An email account. Shit.

Rhys blinked and launched himself from the system. He'd gone through the wrong firewall, passed the _worst_ security. He'd be fired if he was lucky and killed if he wasn't and he'd bet anything that whoever dealt with him wouldn’t be feeling merciful.

The message popped up moments later, flickering at his system and urging him to open it. Rhys winced and pulled it up with his ECHO, not surprised to see an angry paragraph of red text.

It told him to go to Handsome Jack's office tomorrow morning.

Rhys froze, staring at it. Handsome Jack's office. Not Henderson or Henderson's boss or even _Vasquez_ , but Handsome Jack himself.

He'd never met Handsome Jack. Rhys had seen him in the hallways a few times, had heard his shouts ringing through Helios like whip cracks on his eardrums. But the closest Rhys had ever been to meeting him was walking into accounting right after Handsome Jack had stormed in and thrown one of the accountants against the wall until their skull cracked. Rhys had skidded to a stop inside the door and quickly edged to Vaughn's desk as Jack bellowed and stormed back out with the force of tectonic plates smashing together. 

He closed the ECHO message and put a hand on the edge of his desk, gripping it hard. If he was being ordered to Handsome Jack's office, he wouldn't be making it out alive. He didn't even have twenty four hours until the guillotine dropped down. His metal hand went to his throat as he thought of it, rubbing the soft skin.

Slowly, Rhys pried his hand off of his desk, wincing at the stiffness in his fingers. He stood and grabbed his bag, hustling out. No one else in the department so much as looked at him, so it was safe to say the message had been private and news hadn't spread. It wouldn't, not in the few minutes after he'd gotten it, but someone would know someone who had once been friends with the person who sent it and then everyone would know. Rhys was as good as dead and his office would be empty soon.

Vaughn wasn't home, of course. Rhys dropped his bag and sat on the couch, burying his face in his hands.

He knew how to avoid breaking into people's emails. They needed passwords or server access and the flags were obvious. Rhys had no excuse for trespassing. 

Handsome Jack would murder him, all because Rhys couldn't control his goddamned powers long enough to be aware of what he was doing.

He glanced down at his flesh arm, still thrumming and warm. Rhys tore off his vest and pulled his shirt over his head. His metal arm caught in the sleeve and he yanked angrily until it came free, the threads ripping at the seams in a sharp noise. He tossed it carelessly to the floor and looked at his arm.

It was normal, for the moment. Most of his tattoos were covered in make-up that Rhys applied diligently every day. The only part that stayed uncovered was his chest tattoo, an shameless indulgence; no one really knew what siren tattoos were supposed to look like and Rhys enjoyed having his collar loose, flashing the cerulean patterns for the public. As long as his arm was covered, no one suspected.

Handsome Jack had a strange relationship with sirens and Rhys had known that from day one, keeping his left side carefully masked. Not even Vaughn knew. Rhys reached out with his metal hand and brushed it over his skin, imagining he could feel where it changed to tattoos even under the thick make-up. But his metal arm couldn't feel anything, and the seal he used on his make-up kept it from scrubbing away even under the harsh metal fingers.

It must have been hours when the front door clicked open and Vaughn stepped in, grumbling something about numbers that Rhys didn't understand. Rhys jolted and glanced down, snatching his shirt and pulling the torn garment back on, hiding the coils of blue marks that wound around the left half of his torso. 

“Thinks he can just shove me around and give me all this shit,” Vaughn muttered, rounding the corner of the living room. He stopped, shoes squeaking on the hard wood. “Rhys?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Rhys answered simply. 

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Vaughn admitted, flopping into the armchair. “Why are you back home so early? And . . . what happened to your shirt?” Vaughn raised a brow, eyeing Rhys curiously. 

“It's not early, it's–” Rhys looked at the clock. Five-fifteen. He was never home before six. He groaned and hung his head. “It's been a long day.”

Vaughn hummed in sympathy and waited, tapping his fingers on the armrest. He didn't prod or poke and Rhys appreciated that; he needed some more time to steel himself for delivering possibly the worst news he could have had. 

“All right,” he said slowly, sitting up until he could meet Vaughn's eyes. “You're gonna have to brace yourself for this because I don't really know of a way to tell you that isn't really fucking awful.”

Vaughn's eyes went wide and he sat up, paying more attention. “Rhys?” he asked, putting both hands on his knees and squeezing his fingers, tensing up.

“Today,” Rhys said, taking a deep breath. “Today I was trying to find something on eridium, like we've been doing. Something to make us rich so we could finally get the hell off of this space station.” He swallowed, folding his arms. “And I may have, accidentally, in my pursuits . . . broken into someone's email account.”

There was a long beat of silence. And then, “ _What_.”

"I know."

_"What?!"_

"I know!" 

" _Rhys_." Vaughn stood and moved in front of him, hands on his hips. Rhys flinched under the sharp gaze, like knives boring into his skin. “Rhys,” Vaughn said slowly, eyes narrowed. “Please tell me you didn't get caught.”

“I, uh,” Rhys' eyes darted away and he shrugged helplessly, shrinking into the couch.

“Damn it!” Vaughn threw his head back, groaning. “Do you _know_ how uptight they are about private information? You can murder somebody in the food court and they won't give as much of a damn as someone hacking the system like that! How did–” He stopped and glared down at Rhys again. “How did you even _accidentally_ break in?”

“Long story,” Rhys said, staring at the floor. He could feel his siren tattoos like phantom marks beneath his make-up; they would explain everything Vaughn wanted to know, but Rhys wasn't taking that chance.

“So you got in the zone,” Vaughn answered for him. “You fucking hacked in and forgot about being careful, just like you did when you used my goddamn credentials to get accounting information at all hours of the night. Great. I'm so glad you're taking our death sentences so seriously.”

“Not yours!” Rhys said, and winced at the way that sounded. “I mean, it's not your death sentence. I was in my office and . . . and I got carried away.” He unwrapped his arms, bringing up the palm computer on his prosthesis and showing Vaughn the angrily written message. “This is addressed to me and only me. They might ask if I was working with someone but I'm not letting your ass go on the line.”

Vaughn bent down, reading over the message a few times. Rhys saw his glasses flicker on, analyzing the signature and font, but even without that, Rhys would believe almost anything on Helios that had Handsome Jack's name attached to it. No one lied about sending messages from Handsome Jack, on penalty of death. He'd heard that the last guy to try and pretend to be Jack to intimidate his boss had ended up strung like a marionette in the doorway of his department with Handsome Jack's name carved into his face.

“You're going to see– Handsome Jack,” Vaughn said, almost tripping over the name. He clicked his glasses off and looked at Rhys, brow furrowed. “Is there anything you can say about what you did? Why you were peeking at private records?”

“Not much,” Rhys said, letting the message flicker away and dropping his arm. “I'm a data miner. Hacking into emails isn't my job, even if Hyperion would like me to be good at that.” He leaned back against the couch and chuckled hollowly. “Maybe if I'm lucky they'll give me a job getting info from rival companies.”

“Yeah.” Vaughn's voice was flat, joyless. He took up the empty side of the couch, slinging his arm over Rhys' back. “How did you even– I can't believe this.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a long, deep sigh. “Handsome Jack is going to murder you.”

“I know.” Rhys leaned into Vaughn, shuffling down on the couch until his head was low enough for him to lean on Vaughn's shoulder. It was uncomfortable as hell but he needed the contact. Vaughn's hand went automatically to his hair and started petting.

There wasn't a clock in the living room and Rhys didn't move to check it on his ECHO. He wasn't sure how long they sat there like that, only that eventually his stomach growled and Vaughn laughed, getting up to make them both dinner. Rhys stayed on the couch, resting his chin on the arm to watch Vaughn cook. It might be their last night having dinner together, and that thought alone made Rhys' stomach sink like a stone.

They shared a quiet meal and didn’t talk about what was going to happen. Vaughn put a movie on so they could zone out, settling back into each other on the couch, Vaughn’s hand petting Rhys’ hair as it lost the hold of his mousse and slowly started to flop in front of his eyes. When the movie was done they both went to bed, and Rhys lingered longer than he should have in his bedroom doorway, metal arm flinching with the sick desire to bring the message back up, to double check that he really _was_ doomed. He went to bed and fell into a blissful darkness that part of him hoped would never end.

 

* * *

  

Jack's office doors had never looked so intimidating before. Rhys swallowed. His tie was tight around his neck like a boa constrictor, ready to choke him to save him the mercy of dealing with Handsome Jack.

It was just before nine in the morning and Rhys was fairly sure these were his last moments. At least he'd spent them with Vaughn, cooking breakfast together. Or rather, stealing pieces of ham while Vaughn made them omelets. They'd parted for work with dread in their stomachs, knowing they might never see each other again.

Rhys would have thought he was being dramatic, but this was Handsome Jack they were talking about here. Nothing was too much of an exaggeration. The guards hadn't looked very sympathetic when he'd walked in; they were probably used to this.

The doors opened and Rhys shuffled in, flinching when they slammed shut behind him. Jack's office was massive, as it would be, with sweeping walls and a high ceiling, statues and images of Jack placed strategically around so no matter where Rhys turned he was never not looking at him.

But the main affair was right in front of him, sitting at his desk on the raised pedestal at the back of the room, in front of tall windows that overlooked Pandora; Handsome Jack himself, typing on his computer and acting as though Rhys wasn't even there.

He continued to ignore Rhys for a few long minutes. Rhys shuffled back and forth on his feet. Maybe the message had been a mistake, maybe he wasn't meant to be here, and he could go home and tell Vaughn and they would laugh about it–

“Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to get your ass up here?” Jack called sharply, startling Rhys. “I'm sure as shit not comin' down to meet ya, cupcake.”

Rhys flinched again and nodded even though Jack wasn't looking at him, taking tentative steps toward the dias. Jack's desk was longer than Rhys was tall, but with all the room on it, it was strangely blank. It had the computer and a couple knick knacks, a picture frame, but not much else. Rhys had thought Handsome Jack would have more paperwork on his hands.

He probably had an employee for that, though.

Rhys stopped just short of the desk, forcing his hands to stay at his side. He could feel his nerves edging up and his siren powers with them, tattoos faintly warm beneath his shirt. He'd worn a thick one on purpose, covering every inch of himself except the chest tattoo. He would have covered that, too, but Vaughn would have noticed the change and Rhys' last hours were not the time to explain his careful make-up routine and the exact reason he took up the bathroom for two hours every morning.

Jack spent a long time ignoring him. Rhys swallowed and fussed with his tie. When Jack finally looked up it was slow, his gaze panning up while his hands typed in one last thing and finally slammed down on the desk.

Rhys winced, keeping his eyes on the floor.

Jack stood, boots clicking heavily on the metal platform, as if counting down Rhys' execution. Rhys put his hands by his side again and forced himself to breathe.

“So,” Jack said slowly, walking around him, like a cat stalking prey, “you're the idiot who hacked into one of the VP's accounts.”

VP, shit. Rhys had just followed the code and patterns to look for what he wanted. “Yes, sir,” he said, working to keep his voice level and failing miserably.

“Sir! Ha,” Jack laughed, his voice carrying over every inch of the room like an echo designed to mock Rhys before his death. “Scared of me, huh, twiggy?” Jack stopped in front of him, crowding up the space between Rhys and the desk, and put his hands on his hips. He was shorter than Rhys by a few inches but he still managed to look down on him, eyes narrowed and lips lifted in a sneer. “Good instincts.”

“Of course, sir,” Rhys said, unsure what else he could say in a moment like this. Here he was, cowering in front of Handsome Jack, hoping for some shred of mercy in his final moments. He'd rather be shot in the head than thrown out of the airlock, he knew that much.

“Not so smart when it comes to hacking, though.” Jack leaned on the desk with his hips, crossing his arms tight over his chest. Rhys could see his arm muscles flex with the movement and thought of what those big hands would do around his neck.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said, because why wouldn't he? _Not_ grovelling would only get him killed more slowly.

“‘Sorry,’” Jack repeated, deadpan. “You're 'sorry' for stealing from me.”

“Yes,” Rhys said, picking his head up a little. “I was only trying to get ahead, sir.”

“Did I ask you?” Jack snapped. He paused, looking Rhys up and down. “So, what? You wanted to steal all of my info and highjack it outta here?”

“I wanted to get a promotion, sir. That's all.” Rhys swallowed down the tight lump in his throat. He and Vaughn had thought of the lie this morning, because if Rhys had admitted to wanting eridium money then Jack would have ripped his throat out right then and there.

“A promotion,” Jack said slowly, eyebrow quirking. “To what, exactly?”

“I've been waiting on one for a while,” Rhys said, and that part was true. Henderson was supposed to promote him soon but every time they talked Henderson dodged the subject. It was part of what had spurred him to take more risks, to sneak into the system more often. He couldn't wait around on the goodness of Henderson's heart to kick in and give him what he deserved.

“Right.” Jack eyed him again. “Let me tell ya something, kiddo. Around here, everyone screws with each other. And screws each other, but that's not my point.” He stood up tall, still not as tall as Rhys but broader, stronger. He stepped close, getting in Rhys' space, their faces inches apart. Rhys' breath halted but didn't dare move away. “No one,” Jack said slowly, “screws with _me_. If you think you can get away with that shit just because you're as greedy as everyone else, you've got another goddamn thing coming to you.”

The move was so fast that Rhys didn't see it, but he felt with Jack's hand constricted around his throat, squeezing tight and cutting off his air. Rhys tried to gasp and grabbed uselessly at Jack's wrist, but his grip was like a steel trap. Rhys' eyes slid shut and he felt the ground leave his feet, Jack lifting him up almost effortlessly.

“You _don't_ fuck with Handsome Jack,” he snarled.

Rhys' world turned upside down and then his skull collided hard with something, quickly followed by the rest of his body. He yelped but the sound caught where his throat was already bruising, coming out as a strange gurgle instead.

“I'd love to just kill ya right here,” Jack said, stomping his way down the dias to where Rhys had hit the wall, cracking his knuckles as he walked. “But that wouldn't teach anyone a _lesson_ , now would it?”

Something warm trickled down the back of Rhys' head and he reached up to feel it but Jack's hands were on him again, fisted in his shirt and dragging him back up to his toes. “I'm gonna string your goddamn corpse out for everyone to see,” Jack growled. “ _No one_ steals from me.”

“I wasn't–” Rhys started but Jack just threw him again. He crashed into a shelf this time, something tall that rattled when he made impact. Metal trinkets and a few guns fell around his head. There was a warmth just under his skin, a quick radiation that covered his arm and worked fast down his side. More blood? If Rhys could bleed out before Jack finished with him it would be a blessing.

Jack kicked him hard in the ribs. Rhys gasped and tried to scramble away but his hand was quickly becoming useless, and his metal arm wasn't responding. Jack kicked again and something crunched. Pain exploded in Rhys' head, making it hard to see anything, and he could feel blood running into his shirt, pooling in the folds of cloth.

The warmth on his left side flared, hot and bright. Rhys tried to focus on it, letting the sensation carry him through the pain. His shoulders were tight, bunched up, and then the fire was there, too. Jack kicked again but Rhys could barely register it as the heat licked its way down his back, coiling in his chest and cascading down his side, a bonfire lit inside his core.

Another hard blow, right at the bottom of his ribs. The fire roared and burst through Rhys' skin and everything went white.

The pain faded. The blood was gone. All Rhys could feel was the bright spark in his back, slowly unfolding outward and stretching up. Something heavy and wide slid into place, like missing limbs Rhys hadn't realized had been gone. They stretched out and then curled up, shielding him. Hard copper and heavy fire lit itself inside his mouth. He tasted his blood and something warm, like someone had poured molten lava behind his teeth. He tried to open his eyes again and found the whiteness gone, the room fading back into view.

Jack had moved away, eyes wide, hands held up. Around the edges of Rhys' vision were strange blue sparks, curling and stretching. He blinked to clear his vision. They had a form, collecting in a mass and tapering off to a point.

It took a long moment to realize that the sparks were electricity and they were wrapped around Rhys, curved like a shield. His breath hitched and he looked at Jack again. Jack stared, lips parted.

“I–” Rhys choked, throat still sore. But his ribs didn't hurt like they had a minute ago, and the feeling of warm blood on the back of his head was gone. He glanced at the electric wings curled around him, all his muscles stiff and locked into place, not daring to touch the wings for the sparks that flickered over the edges. 

“Holy fuck,” Jack said, a grin slipping into place. “Holy _fuck_ , you gotta be kidding me!” He laughed louder, bracing his hands on his stomach and bending over with the force of it, shoulders shaking. “A goddamn fucking siren, christ!”

Siren. _Siren_. Rhys flinched and scrambled away, pressing his back against the wall. His wings moved with him and pushed up against his skin, buzzing faintly like a soft vibration down his back, humming into his muscles. They stayed curled around him, the only thing stopping Jack from trying to kill him again.

He had– The wings weren't his, they couldn't be– But Rhys had heard the stories, the tales of Jack's adventures, the myth surrounding eridium . . .

Jack was still laughing and it soon leveled out. He straightened and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, the last of his chuckles dying off. “Jesus christmas, kid. Ya'd think with all the background checks we do we would have found something like ' _fucking siren_ ' on someone's paperwork.”

Rhys swallowed, tensing. “Not a lot of people know.” Not even his parents, not really. They saw the tattoos, sure, but Rhys had been the one to figure out what they meant, spending hours of his youth online looking for any hint of other people who had been born with strange tattoos. He'd lived in a small town, no one had suspected and Rhys hadn't breathed a word. 

Jack rolled his eyes and edged closer, careful not to touch the wings. “You can't be the kind of person Hyperion hires and not leave a lot of marks, cupcake.” He quirked an eyebrow, eyes lingering over the wings. “Electricity, very nice.”

The hatred was gone from his face, replaced with cocky optimism that left his expression shining with glee. Jack wasn't even insulted that Rhys wasn't on the floor and gasping in pain. His eyes wouldn't leave the wings, tracing over the lines of electric sparks.

“I-If you're going to kill me,” Rhys said, “then just get it over with.”

“What?” Jack frowned, lips lifting to bare his teeth. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“You were pissed!” Rhys' voice scratched its way out and he coughed hard, wings flickering with the movement. “You were gonna  _murder_ me.”

“Oh, yeah. I'm still pissed about that.” Jack crossed his arms and grinned again, wolfish. “But you see, Rhysie boy, you weren't of any _use_ to me before. A data miner as young as you? I could replace you with an exact copy in a month, two months tops. I don't give a flying shit about losing a data miner.” He moved closer again and Rhys pressed up to the wall, fingers curling over the metal. His wings tucked closer, protective.

Jack stopped inches short of being shocked, glaring down at Rhys with something he could only describe like manic glee. “But a siren, ho boy,” Jack said, and laughed again. “A siren is something we can use. Yeah, you'll come in handy.”

He moved before Rhys could stop him and then Jack's hand was around his throat again, lifting him up and shoving him back into the wall. Rhys cried out and clawed at his hand, wings sparking around him, dragging over Jack's skin. Jack wasn't bothered though the muscles in his arms twitched with every flex.

“You're mine, pumpkin,” he said, voice low and threatening, a tide that washed over Rhys and coiled inside him the way Jack's fingers coiled over his throat. “Forget being a data miner. You've got a job that's far more important.”

Rhys whined and looked down into Jack's eyes, one blue and one green, and saw only hunger there.


	2. Chapter 2

Rhys was surprisingly fine after the whole ordeal. His neck had bruised and he'd had to hide himself the whole way home, holding his arm close and keeping his head low. His powers had unleashed and burned through the make-up covering his tattoos; his shirt was still stained with blood, though the wounds were gone. It was the longest walk back to his apartment Rhys had ever had, and it wasn't just because Jack's office was on the other side of Helios.

At least he was  _physically_ fine. 

Jack had dismissed him a couple hours after he'd come in and not many people were around to see his terrible state. Rhys counted it as one of his small blessings and hurried down the hall, practically jamming his apartment key in and slamming the door behind him.

He'd already emailed his boss about having to go in to see Jack. Henderson would be stunned just to see Rhys walk in the next day, so he didn't worry about the fact that he was technically skipping work, slipping his boots off and walking to his bedroom to collapse on the thick pillows and blankets.

His ribs were sore. By all accounts they should have been broken, possibly puncturing his lungs, but there wasn't more than a mild ache when Rhys shifted his torso. The bleeding on his head was gone and he could feel a soft bump at the back of it where the skin must have been torn, now only scar tissue and a sharp throbbing. 

Rhys had never known his siren powers could heal; but then, he'd never seen them form into wings, either.

He dragged his left arm up and stared at it, the cuff of the sleeve torn off. Jack had nearly pulled it apart, forcing Rhys to show him the tattoos. Rhys stared at the curved blue lines that made their way down his arm, stopping at the edge of his wrist where they could just be hidden by a long sleeved shirt. They were printed over his skin in smoothed blocks and thin lines, looking almost like a circuit board but more organic, more curved. If circuit boards grew in plants, Rhys imagined they'd look like his siren marks.

A siren, under Handsome Jack's watch. Rhys closed his eyes and buried his face in a pillow, moaning long and loud into it until the sound drowned out everything, including his own thoughts.

Vaughn came back eventually. Rhys didn't get off the bed but he slid his sleeve back up, pinning the cuff in place. 

The sounds of pots being moved around carried through Rhys' door. Vaughn started calling his name softly, hesitant. Neither of them had expected to see each other again after that morning and Vaughn's voice shook as he called Rhys' name.

He still didn't move, not even when Vaughn knocked and opened the door, poking his head inside.

“Rhys!” he said, startled. “Shit, man, why didn't you answer me?! Your keys were in the bowl but I . . .” He trailed off, stopping at the side of Rhys' bed. Rhys didn't look up. “Dude,” Vaughn said, reaching down. His fingers trailed gently over Rhys' shirt and grabbed the collar. It took Rhys a minute to realize he was looking at the blood. Right. Of course he was.

“I'm fine,” he said, but the pillow made it unintelligible. Rhys lifted his head, repeating, “I'm fine. I'm not bleeding anymore.”

“Any _more_?!” Vaughn sat on the edge of the bed, pressing his fingers to Rhys' neck like frantic butterflies. “What did he do? Where are you hurt? Why . . . Why are you still _alive_?" His eyes were wide, like saucers. "How did you not  _die_?”

“That's a lot of questions,” Rhys said, letting his head fall back on the pillow.

“Okay, well, how are you hurt then?” Vaughn asked impatiently. “I don't want you dying on me, Rhys, I can't pay rent for this place by myself.”

“I'm not hurt,” Rhys started, and stopped, the intense, stormy hunger in Jack's eyes flashing back to his mind. “I'm fine,” he settled on. “I was bleeding but it wasn't a big deal. Just a small cut.” He reached up and patted the back of his head, wincing at the weight of his metal hand. “Head wounds bleed a lot.”

“Okay,” Vaughn said slowly. “And _how_ did you get that cut?”

Rhys debated being honest for a few seconds and said, “Handsome Jack knocked me into a wall. He was mad about what I did. But I'm fine now.”

“Y-You're–” Vaughn sputtered, hand tightening in Rhys' shirt. “You're _fine_? That's all you have to say about dealing with Handsome Jack and living to tell the tale? You're fine?!”

“Yes,” Rhys said simply. “Vaughn, I'm exhausted. I'd really rather we just ate dinner and left this for some other time.”

There was a long pause, and Vaughn put his hand into Rhys' hair, stroking softly. Rhys relaxed into it and let out a long sigh. There would be time to tell Vaughn about it, to tell him everything. But right now he just wanted to let his wounds heal and forget about the fact that Handsome Jack had looked at him like a panther waiting for its next meal.

 

* * *

 

Trips to Pandora weren't uncommon on Helios. The mining department had shipments sent down every week, and once a month teams went down on a rocket to inspect and manage new sites. A lot of people died in the eridium mining business and being able to oversee a new team launching themselves toward Pandora wasn't anything to write home about.

Rhys eyed the little stereo set into the wall of the kitchen, spouting words about brave explorers facing the dangers of Pandora, and flicked it off. “Why are we always sending more people down there?” he groused. “It's not like enough of us don't die up here _and_ down on that miserable planet.”

“It wouldn't be Pandora if it wasn't killing Hyperion people,” Vaughn said simply. He slid the toast and eggs on Rhys' plate, hesitating as he passed it over the kitchen table to him. “So you're . . . going back to Handsome Jack's office?”

Rhys stopped with his fork halfway to his food, dropping it with a sigh. “I have to.”

“Right.” Vaughn flipped eggs more angrily than he should have, the spatula clanging against the pan like an angry drum. “And your actual job?”

“Leave of absence,” Rhys said, echoing Jack's words from the day before. He'd been given time off from his previous position to do . . . Rhys wasn't sure what. Jack had been intentionally vague about the details. 

“Good luck,” Vaughn said, slapping more butter on the pan.

They parted ways for work. It was disgusting how similar it felt to the day before. Rhys had thought that, if he survived Handsome Jack, he and Vaughn would be celebrating, ready to face anything together after living through the wrath of their infamous CEO. Instead his neck was sore every time he swallowed and his ribs ached with every step. There was a residual soreness in his shoulders from the wings, like an itch left untouched, and it didn't _hurt_ so much as remind Rhys of the terror of Handsome Jack's hands closing around his neck.

All in all, not a good morning.

Jack's secretary waved him past the guards with pursed lips. Jack was already there when Rhys arrived, typing furiously on his computer. Rhys straightened his tie and did his best not to look like a scared rabbit, stepping up to the dais and waiting at the base. 

Jack stopped and sat up, grinning down at Rhys. “Hey, there, kiddo. Nice to see you decided to join me this morning.”

“I didn't have much of a choice, sir,” Rhys said, standing taller.

Jack just laughed, standing and walking around his desk. “There it is again with that 'sir' crap. Not that I don't appreciate it, cupcake, but I've got stuff to worry about and you look about ready to throw up. Just call me Jack and maybe you won't be ready to run in front of a car every time the headlights hit you.”

Rhys nodded stiffly, hands tight at his side. He could already feel his tattoos burning. He'd had to hide them again the night before, covering them up while Vaughn made dinner. They were lighting up already, too fast and too hot. Rhys wasn't sure whether it was due to his new wings, or Jack.

“So,” Jack said, clasping his hands behind his back. “I've got a few things to tell you, and you're going to sit there and nod, all right?”

“And if I don't?” Rhys challenged. He might as well toss himself out of the airlock now but his powers were lighting up and it was hard not to be pissed when he'd been stolen from his old job and Jack was looking down at him like he was a puppy that needed to be taught new tricks.

“I can't kill you,” Jack said, moving down the stairs. “But I can make you _wish_ you were dead, so I'd suggest doing what I tell ya.”

Rhys frowned and nodded stiffly. 

Jack stopped in front of him, leaning back and looking Rhys up and down. “What we're going to do, is you're going to show me exactly what the hell your powers do. And in a couple weeks we're going to take a rocket to Pandora so I can put them to some actual use.”

Rhys' stomach dropped like a stone. “P-Pandora?” he sputtered, leaning back with the weight of the statement. “What can you possibly use me for on Pandora?”

“A lot of things,” Jack said, waving a hand, “and that's my business, not yours, pumpkin. Don't ask too many questions or I'm gonna get annoyed.” He moved closed again, raising a hand. Rhys flinched away but Jack continued, unbothered, and wrapped his large hand over Rhys' shoulder, squeezing so hard Rhys winced and had to bite down a whine. “You're mine now, got it? I already own the soul of every Hyperion employee who's lucky enough to work under my golden throne. But you've got to answer to me personally.” He squeezed tighter, grinning. “I'm your god now, Rhys.”

“Okay!” Rhys said, jerking hard. Jack let go, chuckling as Rhys rubbed the soreness from his skin. He turned sharp on his heel and went back up the dais.

“Come here, cupcake.”

Rhys looked up the dais, at the desk towering over him and Jack standing like a crouched wolf right next to it. He swallowed and walked up. His boots thumping on the stairs were the loudest sound in the room, echoing off the walls. Jack watched with faint amusement as Rhys walked around the desk to stand next to him.

His monitor had the main screen for their company's system log in.

“You broke into the private email system,” Jack said, one eyebrow lifting carefully. “That takes either some extreme skill or some goddamn perfect luck, and if your luck was any worse I would have strangled ya by now. So.” He kicked his chair, tall and golden, out of the way. It hovered gently over the floor, slowing a few feet from the tall windows that overlooked Pandora.

“Show me how,” Jack said, grinning.

“I–” Rhys glanced at the monitor and down at his arm. Admitting that he'd done it completely by accident would likely get him murdered for real, and not doing it would prompt Jack into "making him wish he were dead." He still didn't have a prosthetic leg and Jack would be exactly the type of person who would laugh at the idea of ‘evening Rhys out.'

“What?” Jack said, sharp and loud. “You can't do it? Don't pass me that bullshit, I already saw your credentials in the system when security got tripped.”

“Yeah,” Rhys said, voice higher than he wanted. The only thing he still needed to complete his look of cowardice was a tail between his legs. This wasn't how Rhys had imagined meeting the man who exemplified everything he'd wanted to be.

“Aw, are we getting embarrassed?” Jack grabbed his hand before Rhys could stop him, yanking him in front of the screen and pressing him hard to the desk. He was behind Rhys suddenly, both hands on his wrists pinning him to the desk, forcing him to lean forward, Rhys' face nearly touching the monitor hovering. “I can make you _much_ more embarrassed, cupcake. I've seen your office on the security cams. I know how many posters you have.”

Rhys let out a hard breath, fingers tightening over the desk. His blood started pounding and his growing blush burned like a flame on his skin. 

Jack was gone again. He slid one hand into Rhys' hair and yanked him back up. “Get working, show me what the hell you can do. I can't kill you, but I can do a whole lot worse.”

Nodding slowly, Rhys waited until the large hand in his hair was gone. He looked at the screen, innocent in itself, but with so much potential. The last time he'd shown anyone his powers had been years ago, to someone he trusted and hoped would accept him. It hadn't ended well then, and he didn't expect it to end well now. 

He put his hands down on the desk, either side of the keyboard. He blinked and his ECHOeye activated. Rhys scanned the computer screen out of habit, but all that the system spit back out at him was that it was Hyperion issue. He frowned and closed the menu, taking a deep breath and letting the slow coil of his power build up inside of him. It was easier with Jack's insistence edging on his anger; his powers had started simmering beneath his skin the moment Rhys had stepped into Jack's office, and now they flared, glad for the chance to protect him, to attack.

Rhys did his best to rein in the urge. His tattoos glowed like electric sparks. They covered his left side, the heat climbing like a hot day in summer to swallow over his skin. It was never the same as external heat, never quite enough to hurt, but there was the pinprick feeling that it _might_ and it made Rhys suck in a sharp breath.

Jack made a noise behind him. Rhys was too focused to think about it, lifting his hands slowly to the keyboard. He signed into the system with his own credentials and dropped his metal hand away, his left hand on one of the computer ports. Life sparked on his tongue and Rhys nearly jumped at the immediacy of it; it usually took a few minutes for the system to warm up to him. Then again, this was Jack's office, where all of the power was concentrated.

For a half second Rhys wondered about Jack's private files, where they might be housed. There was a server room on Helios that was under lock and key and bullet fire, but Handsome Jack wouldn't risk that, not for his own work. He'd have a private server, probably somewhere in this very office. For a single moment Rhys considered trying to find it.

But everything he was doing was now displayed itself on the monitor and Jack would know, would wring his neck and leave him to choke on his own air.

Rhys cast the thought aside. Jack wanted something simple; he'd go for simple.

There were a lot of things at Helios that were supposedly public record that never made it out to the public. If no one needed to know Hyperion wrapped it up tight, never to see the light of day. They would hype products to their death but when it came to the nitty gritty, the company would rather shoot you than give up the details lest someone else get new ideas and run with them. Or at least, that was Handsome Jack's reasoning, and anyone who went against that reasoning never lived for long.

Knowing this, Rhys let the heat lick its way up his arm and spark at the edges of his fingers, peeling his way through the server routes to find the nearest bit of juicy information. The accounting department usually had something good up its sleeve, and finances were private enough that getting in should have been tough. Rhys, however, had gone into the system on Vaughn's credentials often enough to know the code and the firewalls, to work past it as easy as jumping into a lake, diving straight into the sensitive files.

He brought them up on the monitor, displaying spreadsheets and zip files about the latest record of shipments to Pandora. There were a lot of them; Hyperion was constantly maintaining their mining teams and expeditions. As Rhys pulled them up the amount actually started to shock him, seemingly endless threads of documents blooming under his hands. He leaned closer to the monitor, barely feeling his own body as he sought more information.

A hard yank on his shoulder took him out of his trance. Rhys yelped and fell to the floor, banging hard into the desk. He winced and grabbed his shoulder, the metal hand squeezing too hard, too fast. Rhys forced himself to let go and breathed out, looking up at Jack standing in front of the monitor. His hands were planted firmly on the top of the desk, leaning down at an angle with his hips popped. A grin slowly spread over his face and he laughed, low and throaty. “Well, well, pumpkin,” he said, in a tone that was something too similar and far too different from a proud parent, “I can see you aren't completely useless. But how do I know this wasn't just some hacking trick?”

“I-I–” Rhys swallowed and felt the hard lump in his throat. “My fingers weren't on the keyboard, you saw that.”

Jack looked down at him and back at the monitor, as if realizing this for the first time. “Well, then,” he said slowly. “In that case, I've got a few plans to put together.”

Rhys waited a long moment, watching him. Jack glanced back down, lips pursed. “What, you need a written form or something? Get the hell out of my office.”

“Oh, y-yeah.” Rhys stood slowly, his knees shaking. The last remnants of electricity and humming wires were pulsing through him, clapping like silent thunder, and it took a moment to bring himself back into the real world, to remind himself that something existed beyond numbers and the faint heat still coiled beneath his ribs. Jack ignored him throughout, moving his leg backward to hook on the base of his chair and pull it back into place. Rhys took the chance to shuffle off the dais, pausing at the bottom.

“Do you . . .” He started to speak and hesitated, looking up. Handsome Jack's attention was elsewhere. Rhys steeled himself and said, “Do you want me to continue with my day job?”

“Huh?” Jack's eyes flicked to him. “Didn't I tell you that yesterday? Do whatever the fuck you want as long as your ass is in my office when I tell it to be.” A slow smile spread over his lips and he stopped typing long enough to look Rhys fully in the eyes. “That day job won't matter for much longer, anyway. Might as well enjoy being a meaningless capitalist cog for another couple of weeks.”

The way he said it, tongue curling dangerous like a dagger over every syllable, had shivers going down Rhys' spine. He nodded quickly and retreated, clasping his wrist so tight in his metal hand that he knew there would be bruises when he let it go.

It was almost lunch time. He knew where Vaughn and Yvette would be. Jack had sworn him to secrecy, to keep what he was doing away from Helios' general populace, but Rhys couldn't keep it from them. Not when his knees were still shaking and he was ready to collapse.

The food court was crowded and it took an agonizing few minutes to find them both. When Rhys spotted them, both with coffees and no actual food, he darted over, trying his best to walk fast without looking like he'd seen his own death.

Vaughn spotted him first, looking up from his cup, seeing Rhys duck and weave around the crowds coming in for their lunch break. “Rhys!” he said, almost spilling his drink as he stood. Yvette yelled something and steadied both their mugs, following Vaughn's gaze. Her eyes went wide, shoulders tensing. Her entire position shifted, automatically on guard.

Vaughn practically bowled into Rhys, clasping hands over his back and burying his face in Rhys' shoulder. “I thought you were with Handsome Jack,” he said, looking up quickly.

“He, uh, well.” Rhys glanced at Yvette, still at the table. “He let me go early. I figured I should find you two.”

Vaughn searched his face, looking for something more, but Rhys just pulled away and went to the table, pulling out a chair and planting himself down hard.

Despite the noise from the crowd, their table felt eerily silent, none of them speaking. Rhys sagged in his seat until Yvette pushed her coffee to him with a meaningful look, and he took it gratefully, pulling a long swig from it.

“So,” she said, voice flat. “Handsome Jack.”

“Yeah.” Rhys glanced at her and winced. Her lips were pursed, hands folded tight over each other. Vaughn had told her about the first meeting, when they thought Rhys might actually die for his efforts in trying to help them all, but he'd never heard what her reaction was. Now he shrunk away from her, waiting for her to speak.

She sighed, long and deep. “Rhys,” she said, her tone chiding.

“I'm not dead yet!” Rhys said, a little too loud. He glanced at the people around them but no one took notice. 

“You almost were,” she said, her voice soft and accusing. Rhys' heart tightened and he reached out before he could think, putting his hand over both of hers. Her lips tipped up in the barest smile. “Metal isn't the most comforting, you know.”

“Oh, uh.” Rhys started to pull back but she stopped him, grabbing his hand and putting it back where it had been, holding it between both of hers and rubbing her thumb gently over the back of the plating.

“What does he want?” Vaughn asked, sitting up, eager. “You didn't tell me, I thought . . .” He turned away, licking his lips.

“Let's–” Rhys swallowed, looking around at the people milling around the food court and the myriad of cameras positioned around the walls and ceiling. “I'll tell you,” he promised, looking between them both. “But let's not discuss it out here.”

They nodded, dropping the conversation and sliding effortlessly into a discussion about Vaughn’s struggles now that he’d been demoted, starting with one of his coworkers seeing fit to steal his packed lunch and throw it in one of the toilets. When lunch break ended Rhys went back to the apartment, watching Vaughn and Yvette walk down the hall together, their backs to him.

The wait to the end of the work day was practically torture. Rhys didn't see a point in going back to his office. The apartment was empty without Vaughn, though; Rhys remembered why he liked working late and coming back to find Vaughn with dinner ready and their favorite shows already lined up to watch on the TV. Rhys always had to do the dishes afterward but it was worth it.

He paced around the apartment for a while, flitting between the TV and his books, even bringing up his laptop to do a little work from home. The numbers and code reminded him too much of Jack, the sight of it making his spine shiver. Rhys quickly shut the laptop and splayed on the couch instead. 

Vaughn came home with Yvette in tow, and they both had alcohol. The good stuff, too. Oh gods, they were expecting Rhys to tell them he had a death sentence. It hadn't been pleasant two days ago and was even less so now as they set the bottles on the counter and Vaughn started pulling food out for them.

Yvette took up residence in the armchair. Rhys stayed on the couch and patted his fingers nervously against the arm, waiting for them all to be ready.

Twenty seven years he’d been able to hide it. It was Rhys' longest streak for anything. When he'd first gotten the ECHOeye and the arm, he'd tried to mask them, make himself look . . . normal. It didn’t work for long. His eye was too blue to be natural and his arm jerked too much in the first few years, the kinks not yet worked out and Rhys not yet used to using it. Everyone had known almost immediately.

The siren thing was easier. Some make-up and long sleeves and his tattoos were nearly invisible; he'd mastered it as a teenager and spent probably thousands of dollars just on cover-up in his lifetime. As long as he didn't use his powers around other people, he was fine.

Now he had a burning heat inside him that wouldn't go away and he could swear he felt his shoulders itch with the temptation to bring his wings back.

Vaughn reheated a casserole in the oven and brought them each a plate and a strong drink. Rhys downed half of his and hissed at the way it stung going down his throat, clawing through the flesh.

“All right,” Yvette said, “Rhys, you need to tell us _exactly_ what's going on. No more secrets or I swear I'm gonna wring your neck.”

Rhys nodded, taking a few bites of his dinner. Hopefully the food would help settle his stomach. If it didn't, well . . . he'd deal with that when it came to it.

“So?” Vaughn asked, nudging Rhys' shoulder with his own. “Spill.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rhys put his plate on the coffee table and settled both hands in his lap. “It's . . .” There weren't words for it, not really. Six sirens in the entire universe, so the lore said, and Rhys was one of them. The odds were extremely against him and he wouldn't blame his friends for not believing him. But nothing else quite explained why Handsome Jack would discover Rhys hacking his system and _not_ kill him.

He wanted Rhys for something. What, exactly, Rhys couldn't know. If Rhys didn't say something, though, Vaughn and Yvette would never stop worrying.

“It might be . . .” Rhys hesitated. “It might be easier to show you.”

They both raised their eyebrows. Rhys ignored them, standing up. Vaughn's eyes bugged out a little when he started taking his shirt off, something Rhys didn’t do readily. Rhys hadn't been shirtless around him since the college days. Rhys had covered himself up then, too, and if Vaughn hadn't realized his asexuality when he did Rhys might have been tempted to uncover everything for him, to show him every mark on his body long before he could understand the consequences.

Now he was stripping without a thought. Vaughn swallowed hard.

“Did Jack . . . _do_ something to you?” Yvette asked slowly, eyeing Rhys up and down. “Rhys, if he hurt you–”

“It's fine,” Rhys said, thinking of his aching ribs and bruised throat. It didn't even show on his skin, his wounds somehow fixed already. That was the most bizarre thing and Rhys was trying not to think about how apparently he could heal himself. He'd never done it before and he didn't want to face it just at that moment. “I'll be right back,” he mumbled, darting around the coffee table, to the bathroom. The make-up remover was under the sink. He put cover-up on his face too so Vaughn never questioned it, even if Rhys bought a lot more than was reasonable.

He put the remover on a towel and swiped down his arm. It smeared and the blue showed under the streaks. He could hear Yvette and Vaughn whispering to each other in the living room but he couldn't pick out the words. Rhys let the noise filter absently through his mind until his arm was clean again.

The lines and curves swirled over his skin, as fresh as the day he was born. Rhys took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom.

They looked up, confused at first, eyes going wider as they each looked at his arm. Vaughn's jaw dropped. Yvette leaned back in her chair, her gaze darting up and down Rhys' frame.

Rhys waited a long few moments. “So this is . . . the issue.”

Vaughn managed to close his mouth. “Since when do you have arm tattoos, dude?!” he asked, brow furrowed. “I thought– you told me you didn't want more tattoos!”

He couldn't help chuckling a little at that, thinking of the day in their first year at Hyperion when Vaughn had gotten drunk and proposed matching arm tattoos. Rhys had already lost his normal arm by then and any tattoo artists worth their snuff would wash his make-up away and find the siren marks. He'd declined swiftly, claiming the marks he let show on his chest were enough.

“They aren't tattoos,” Yvette said, hands clenched tight in her lap. “Rhys . . .” Her tone was gentle but admonishing. Rhys' eyes darted away.

“Huh?” Vaughn looked at the marks again, tracing the patterns. “Are they– fake? Rhys, what does this have to do with Jack?”

“Sirens,” Yvette said sharply. It made them both wince. Yvette was staring at the floor, teeth clenched. A long moment passed, the only sound in the room that of their collective breathing. The food and drinks sat abandoned on the table, the food getting cold and the drinks getting warm. Yvette looked ready to punch something, fingers going pale with her tension. 

“Sirens,” Vaughn repeated quietly, head lowering as he thought. “Wait– you don't mean the, the weird myth figures, do you?” He glanced between them. “Not those people who supposedly have super weird powers? With the– the eridium and shit.”

“The one and only,” Rhys said, lifting his arm in a helpless shrug. “One in a million chance, buddy. Your best friend is a siren.”

“It's _way_ less than one in a million,” Vaughn said, laughing in a sharp, panicked tone. “Oh, god, if it were that big of a chance I probably would have met a few by now.” He put a hand to his head, running it through his hair a few times. “You– I've seen you shirtless! You were–” Vaughn looked at the bathroom door, still open, the light spilling out. “All that make-up,” he said flatly, the pieces finally clicking in place. “You . . .”

“I hid it,” Rhys confirmed, nodding.

Before he could say anything else Yvette stood sharply, stalking across the room and raising a hand.

The slap stung through his cheek, radiating down his neck. Rhys cried out and flinched away, but she didn't hit him again. He opened his eyes tentatively. Yvette was just standing, hand still raised, glaring at him. Her eyes had the kind of fury that made people on Helios scatter like frightened cockroaches, and it was suddenly no wonder Yvette had gotten the job she'd held successfully for over three years.

“Rhys,” she growled, and Rhys tensed again, ready to be hit. He deserved it. The blow never came, though, and Yvette slowly deflated, hand dropping, shoulders falling. She took a deep breath and let it out in one long sigh, shaking her head slowly. “Rhys . . .” she said again.

“I'm sorry,” Rhys said, not daring to get closer to her. “I wouldn't have, not– not if I thought I had a choice.”

“Dude,” Vaughn said, now staring at the tattoos winding their way over Rhys' skin. “Why have we been scrambling around on _Helios_? You could work for anyone you wanted! With those marks, god, anyone would want to say they had a siren on their team.”

“That's exactly why he couldn't have told anyone.” Yvette crossed her arms and looked up at Rhys, lips thin.

“What? Why?”

Yvette turned sharply, heels thumping so hard on the carpet that Rhys thought they might drive a hole through it. “Don't you get it?!” she snapped. “That's why Handsome Jack never killed him! Rhys showed him his fucking siren tattoos like a goddamn moron and now Jack's got another siren on his hands! Rhys is as good as _gone_ , Vaughn!”

Vaughn went pale at her words, lips parting silently. He looked at Rhys and back to Yvette. “You're . . . you're not joking around.”

“Why would I?!”

“Hey,” Rhys said gently, and winced when Yvette whirled back to him. “It wasn't my choice,” he said, firm. “I never would have shown Jack my powers, not even if he was going to kill me.”

“How do we know that?” Yvette spat.

Rhys raised his hands up defensively, feeling the vague spark of heat inside him. He used to be _so_ in control and now the barest hint of fighting started the warmth coiling under his skin. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Yvette,” he said. “Look at my ribs for a second.”

She jerked, like she would recoil at the thought of being proven wrong, but she did. Rhys put a hand where Handsome Jack had broken his bones, where they'd been healed but bruised after his powers had first surged through him like rolling thunder. There was still a faint bruise there, patterned over the bone, that stung when he touched it. “I'm pretty sure Jack shattered my ribs here. He was _going_ to kill me.”

“ _What_?” Vaughn said, but Yvette ignored him and approached Rhys, mirroring where his hand rested with her own. Rhys inhaled sharply when she touched it, waiting for her to feel out the sore spot.

“It doesn't look like a broken rib.”

“Yeah, that's because . . .” Rhys glanced at his tattoos. “I'm not sure what siren powers do, but whatever it is, it helped me not die. I was blacking out and my tattoos lit up, and then– and then I had wings.”

Yvette went stiff. Vaughn stood now, looking at Rhys' wound and back up to his face, like he could find some sort of explanation that made sense.

“Siren powers,” Yvette muttered, shaking her head and stepping back. “Handsome Jack's going to keep you now. You're _his_.”

Rhys stepped back, putting his metal hand self consciously over his arm, tracing the pattern of the marks. “Should have stayed satisfied with my job,” he said with a hollow laugh. “Even the Helios rat race is better than this.”

“So you're . . .” Vaughn swallowed. “You're just going to become his? Just like that? No plans to get rich, no schemes to toss other Hyperion jerks out, just– this siren crap?”

“I don't have much choice.”

“But you do!” Vaughn growled, hands curling into fists. “Tell him no! Don't play his stupid game!”

“That'll get Rhys killed,” Yvette said matter-of-factly.

Vaughn looked between them, desperate. Rhys wanted to hug him and suppressed the instinct. Instead he moved back, away from them both, hand tightening over his bicep.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Yvette spoke first. “Do you have any idea what he's planning to do with you?”

“Me?” Rhys shook his head quickly. “He said something about plans but I have no idea what.” The word  _Pandora_ flashed in Rhys' mind and he pursed his lips. 

“Can you figure out what the plans are? Is Handsome Jack going to let you keep coming home or doing your job at work?”

Rhys' brow furrowed as he thought. “He said he didn't care what I did as long as I show up when he calls for me. So I can do whatever, I guess. I don't know if I'm still getting paid for my day job, actually. Last I checked Jack had called in a leave of absence for me.”

“You're–” Vaughn groaned. “Don't call him ' _Jack_ ' like he's a friend, shit.”

“Uh, sorry?” Rhys' shoulders tensed and he wrapped his arms loosely around himself. “I don't know anything else, I swear.”

“I believe you,” Yvette said, her voice gentle. She moved closer to Rhys and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. Her thumb traced reflexively over the tattoo there and Rhys glanced up at her, but Yvette didn't look disgusted or angry anymore. Just tired. “Our next plan of action is finding out what exactly Jack wants to do, because if it's anything that might hurt you we need to get you out of here, and fast.”

Rhys laughed quietly, a small warmth fluttering inside his chest at hearing Yvette talk like her normal self. He leaned more into her comforting touch and hummed, thinking. “He probably won't tell me anything unless I ask, and even then it's a gamble.”

“You can't say no to him.” Yvette brought her other hand up and wrapped them both around Rhys, pulling him in for a hug. “He'll kill you.”

“I know.” Rhys squeezed her back.

“We have to work with what we've got.” Yvette pulled away and put both hands on Rhys' cheeks. “Do what you can to find out what he's doing, and _run_ the second he tries to make you do something you can't do. Okay?”

Rhys stared for a long moment, long enough that Yvette patted his cheek and asked again, “Do you understand?”

“Y-Yeah.” He swallowed and nodded quickly. “I get it. I'll be careful.”

“Good.” Yvette stepped back and looked at their food still sitting on the table. “Let's finish up dinner, and then . . .” She sighed. “Come up with a plan of action.”

“I'm turning the TV on,” Vaughn mumbled, grabbing the remote, scrolling until he found something mindless the play in the background. Rhys walked around the couch and grabbed his shirt, pulling it back on and settling in his seat. He thought he saw Vaughn shift away but Yvette handed Rhys his plate and he gladly let himself get lost in his meal for a few minutes.

For now, none of them mentioned Handsome Jack or Rhys' situation. It was a small relief and Rhys tried to pretend he wasn't agonizing over it more with every passing second.


	3. Chapter 3

Not having to use the cover-up at home was a small blessing. Vaughn didn't talk to him that morning and Rhys left him to his sulking, packing his work bag and wearing a long sleeved shirt. He put make-up on his hand and wrist, but everything else he left alone, glad not to have the restrictive, tacky feeling on his skin.

They didn't have a plan of action. Yvette had tried to talk them through one but Rhys didn't know enough about Jack’s plans. They only knew that Handsome Jack was obsessed with vaults, and sirens had unique powers. It was as good a guess as any that Rhys might get involved in the vault business, but it was only a _guess_ , and for all they knew Jack just liked having a new toy. 

Rhys hadn't mentioned Pandora. Not yet. It seemed like . . . too much at once, for his friends. 

Rhys mulled it over while he went to his boss to explain that Handsome Jack had free reign of his schedule and that he might be absent more than a few times. Henderson didn't seem to care, nodding along nervously and waving a hand at him to leave. 

For a few hours Rhys pretended he was living his normal life at work, that nothing special had happened to him and he hadn't been born with any great curse. His life was simple: go to work, sort through data, do everything he could to get promoted, go home. Rhys had been trying to kiss up to Henderson for a while; he was the one who handed out pay raises and Rhys knew Vasquez had been gunning for the next position.

His reality came crashing down on him when his ECHO alert beeped and he flicked his eye on to see a new message from Handsome Jack, ordering Rhys down to his office.

Rhys sighed and packed up his things. He wasn't going to come back to work today.

The guard didn't even turn his head when Rhys walked by, and the office door opened for him automatically. Jack was sitting up at his desk. His hands worked fast, too fast for Rhys to know what he was typing, and he was hunched so close to the screen, blue illuminating the curves and creases of his mask, that he looked like he might go blind. Every time he leaned away to check something his fingers flexed, working knots loose from the tendons so he could type at light speed when he moved back.

It was all very impressive and Rhys steeled himself for whatever Jack was going to throw, walking with quick steps that echoed loudly in the cavernous office.

“Well, look who decided to show,” Jack said, not looking away from his screen.

“Yeah.” Rhys tried to swallow but the feeling got stuck in his throat, dry and uncomfortable. “What did you call me here for?”

Jack tsked, like Rhys was a child, and didn't look away from his computer. “Patience, cupcake. Siddown somewhere, it'll be a while yet.”

Rhys flushed, anger and embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck. “Why did you call me if you weren't ready to talk? I was in the middle of work.”

Jack paused then, looking down at him. “Oh, are we– are we doing this now?” He laughed, standing up fast from his chair. “We _are_ , aren't we?” He grinned, teeth shining too bright for Rhys' liking. “You just tried to get snippy with Handsome goddamn Jack. If you were anyone else, kitten, I'd have shot you in the face for that.”

Rhys swallowed but didn't let himself cower. Yvette had told him not to back down. If he cowered he was admitting that Handsome Jack had as much power over Rhys as he did with anyone else. And, well, maybe he did, but Rhys was a siren. That had to mean _something_ , even if that was just keeping a few shreds of his dignity– and his face– in tact.

Jack's eyes narrowed and he put a hand on his hip. “But I guess you're not anyone else, are you? You want my attention, fine, you got it.” He stomped his way down the dais, stopping too close to Rhys, lips twisted in an amused smile. “You're my _most_ important employee now, aren't you?”

Rhys leaned back, taking a deep breath. “I just want to know what's going on with me.”

For a long moment Jack stared, and he let out a quick, short laugh. “You got balls, cupcake, I'll give you that.” He slapped Rhys hard on the shoulder, not even wincing when his hand hit the hard metal of the prosthesis. He turned sharply on his heel. “What do you know about surviving on Pandora, kid?”

“Pandora?" Hot panic flashed through Rhys. He followed Jack up, his steps slower. “I know what everyone else knows, that it's a 'cesspool of life, crime, and jackasses with knives.'” The videos Helios employees were given that talked about the evils of Pandora and the benefits of the Hyperion work done down there weren't afraid to be explicit about skag attacks and the best guns Pandora could afford tearing bullets through someone's body.

“Nice, I'm surprised you remember that.” Jack skirted to a stop in front of the wide windows overlooking Pandora, hands clasped behind his back. “Pandora's the worst cesspool you'll find and I need to do what I can to salvage the good shit before the locals wreck it all.” He glanced over his shoulder at Rhys, who was still standing in front of Jack's desk. “That's where you come in.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, there's a lot of shit to be found down there but only with the right tools.” He turned again and walked up to Rhys, raising a hand quickly. Rhys flinched but Jack wrapped a hand tight on his left wrist, dragging it close and pushing the sleeve up. Rhys' tattoos ended abruptly at his wrist but higher up on his arm they still twisted over the skin, curving in stiff lines like wires bending inside a computer casing. “This,” Jack said, tapping his thumb on the skin, “is my golden ticket.”

Rhys yanked his hand back, and Jack let him, laughing as Rhys fumbled to get his sleeve back down and button it with clumsy metal fingers. “In two weeks,” he said, waiting until Rhys looked at him again, “we're going down to Pandora, and you're going to help me find a vault.”

The words passed through Rhys' brain and he blinked, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Jack just kept looking at him, expression smug and arms crossed over his chest, waiting. Rhys opened his mouth, words failing him. He stared like a goldfish that had been plucked out of its tank and dumped on the floor.

A low laugh slowly rumbled through Jack. “That's a face I haven't seen for a while,” he said, shoulders shaking with his laughter. “Although last time it was in my big fucking bed and I was a hell of a lot happier. Close your mouth, kitten, you look ridiculous.”

Rhys shook his head and snapped his mouth shut, teeth clicking hard together.

“I already told your manager to let you go for as long as I need ya, so don't worry about that. Get all your shit together, anything you'll need for Pandora. I'd suggest saying your goodbyes, we'll be gone for a while.”

“Wait, wait,” Rhys shook his head, putting his hands up. “We're going to _Pandora_? In two weeks?” Jack had mentioned it but not a  _vault_ , not the impossible ongoing dream of Hyperion–

“We'd go sooner but my teams need a certain amount of time for all the bullshitery. Trust me, cupcake, I don't wanna wait here any more than you do.”

“We're going to Pandora. To find a vault,” Rhys repeated, the words sounding strange and foreign to his ears.

Jack rolled his eyes and walked past him, dropping back down into his chair. “Yes, kid, did you not hear me? If you've got hearing issues I suggest seeing a doctor before we leave. That shit won't help you on Pandora and I'm not repeating myself a dozen times over.”

Rhys' eyes slid to the window, where Pandora sat, turning through space at speeds he couldn't comprehend. The space station was always moving around it in a constant cycle, never without a Hyperion eye on the violent, dangerous planet.

He was going there. With Handsome Jack.

“Can–” Rhys swallowed. “Can I bring anyone else with me?”

Jack stopped in the middle of reaching for the ECHOcomm on his wrist and snorted. “Uh, _no_? It's bad enough that I have to drag your sorry ass along, we're not turning this into a tagalong. Say goodbye to whatever friends or lovers you've got, you're not seeing them again until we get back.”

Rhys deflated, hands unclenching. “We're coming back.”

“We're certainly not dying out there. Now shut up.” Jack waved a hand. “I have important work to do and I can't have you blabbering in the background.”

“That's . . .” Rhys shifted on his feet, glancing around the big office. “That was it? You didn't want anything else?”

Jack blew out a breath through his nose, fast and hard, and he glared down at Rhys. “I didn't tell ya to leave, cupcake, I said be quiet. I got shit for you to do yet. Just sit there and look pretty for a while, will ya? You aren't my only job on this fucking space station. In fact, right now, you're low on the list of people I give a shit about.” He pointed to the other side of the room and waved his hand again. “Scram.”

Rhys puffed out an indignant breath, walking down the dais. There wasn't really anywhere to sit– unless he counted the bases of the numerous statues of Jack– and nothing much in the office to kill time. Some art and framed pictures of Jack himself hung above him, taking up big, impressive chunks on the walls, but they were sparse, the metal walls meant to look threatening and cold. Rhys stared at one picture of Jack in profile, tracing the contours with his eyes.

Behind him, Jack started a call he was no longer close enough to hear, the first few words indistinct. They were followed immediately by angry shouting. Rhys peeked back over his shoulder to see Jack pacing back and forth, yelling into the comm clipped on his ear and speaking with his hands. They were big, much bigger than Rhys', and they waved in the air as Jack roared.

Rhys eventually did sit down on one of the big busts, ignoring the fact that Jack was quite literally looming over him. He traced a hand over his flesh palm, smudging the make-up he'd used there. Vaughn had frowned at him that morning as he’d smeared cover-up on his hand and wrist, hiding just the visible parts. It was easier, somehow, not to have to cover all of it. Not just in the physical sense, but knowing Vaughn could look at him and not freak out. Or at least, hide the freak out because he cared about Rhys' feelings.

Vaughn had stared at them a lot after their discussion. Rhys had let him hold his hand, turning his arm back and forth to trace over the tattoos. Rhys had always thought they looked like a circuit board, but Vaughn said they looked like a thick spiderweb, tracing in a pattern with a looseness that didn't come from something manmade. The comparison hit him as strange but Rhys didn't argue.

“I don't care!” Jack shouted, loud enough that Rhys startled. “I _told_ you to get the shipment in immediately and if someone shot down the goddamn ship, well, that's not my fault, is it? Get me the fucking order or I'm gonna shoot _you_ down, just so you know exactly how inconvenient it is!”

Rhys ducked his head and breathed in fast. Handsome Jack, his hero. He didn't take any bullshit and he knew how to dish it out right where it hurt people. Rhys had seen videos of him, staged affairs of him parading his wealth and power, or undercover camera shots at bad angles of him yelling at employees. No one really saw him do anything but shoot people or work, and they were often one and the same.

When he'd first seen Jack working at his computer, it had been strange, a glimpse into something more calm. This image, of him pacing and screaming into his ECHO, was a bit more in line with what Rhys knew. It was one thing to know in theory how Jack handled everyone. Seeing it in practice was something different.

It had to have been an hour or more when Jack finally hung up the comm. He'd yelled at a few more people and death threats had slid from his mouth more often than proper pleasantries, and at one point he threw a fist down into his desk. Rhys had winced, waiting for Jack to complain, but Jack had just shaken his hand out with a quiet hiss and continued yelling. The words were indistinct when he bothered to be quiet, but there wasn't a whole lot of calm conversation.

After he hung up, Jack slammed down into his chair and rubbed a hand down his face with a long sigh. Rhys stood, brushing his pants off, and walked slowly back toward the dais.

Jack looked up, frowning at him, the expression smoothing the closer Rhys got. “Fuck,” he spat, sitting up. “I forgot you were here.”

Annoyance lanced through Rhys’ chest like a lightning flash, sharp and quick. “Yeah,” he spat, “I tried to make myself scarce.” He already had a sense of what Jack wanted from him. It was one of the reasons he'd hid being a siren; everyone wanted the flash and pizzaz, and Rhys had learned early on that the most entertaining people in a crowd were also the ones that got shit on the most. Handsome Jack, who the universe simultaneously hated and loved, was a prime example.

“Right, right, right,” Jack said quickly, standing and waving his hands wildly. “Okay, okay, so, let me ask you something first, kiddo, let's see . . .” Jack eyed him up and down, eyes flicking back and forth, unsure where to settle. “Lose the shirt,” he decided, squaring his shoulders.

Rhys stiffened. “I'd rather not.”

Jack sneered and walked close, fast, grabbing Rhys' collar and jerking him forward. “Listen, cupcake,” he hissed. “When I give you an order, you _follow it_ , capisce?”

“I'm perfectly willing,” Rhys grit out, the collar of his shirt quickly choking him in Jack's fierce grip. “But I'm not going to be . . . a doormat,” he spat, panting hard and struggling to stay on the ground, his toes barely scraping the floor and, he was sure, scuffing his good boots.

Jack's eyes narrowed and his lips lifted, showing off his teeth. If Rhys didn't know better he would say Jack wanted to rip his throat out himself. But Handsome Jack didn't do gore; if he wanted to kill someone, he did it nice and clean with a gun, or a hand around their throat.

Rather like Jack was holding him now.

After a long moment, where Rhys could feel his own face going red, Jack dropped him. He stumbled, gasping, and tipped so far back that he almost fell over the edge of the dias. His heels caught the edge just in time and Rhys' arms waved, getting his balance back. All the while Jack stared at him, an eyebrow quirked. “You all right there, champ?”

“Uh, yeah.” Rhys swallowed and felt the new bruise on his throat quickly covering the old one. Without his powers it was obvious that he could be hurt as easily as the next person, and the thought shouldn't have been as comforting as it was. Perhaps the normalcy was welcome after the whirlwind that was Jack. Rhys rubbed his throat and cleared it. “So, uh . . .”

“Don't sass me,” Jack snapped. “I'm not gonna have a little punk following me around just because you've got fancy wings. But.” He paused, lips pressed in a thin line. “I like a man who knows how to ask for what he wants.”

“Ah, thanks, I guess.” Rhys coughed again, wishing more than anything that he could get some water to soothe the ache.

“My point stands.” Jack crossed his arms and stood with his legs wide, glaring down at Rhys. “I want that shirt off. Now.”

Nodding, Rhys undid his vest and peeled his shirt off, shivering at the rush of cold air over his chest. His nipples didn't get properly hard in the cold room; they hadn't been able to do much of anything since the surgery a few years back, and Rhys paused to watch Jack, see his reaction.

His eyes might have glanced down at the pink scars under Rhys' pecs but if they did it was so fast that Rhys didn't see it. Jack quickly focused on his arm, moving over to it and taking the wrist between deft fingers, pulling his arm up and running his free hand over the tattoos.

“They're different,” he muttered quietly, and glanced up at Rhys. “You have these all your life?”

“As long as I can remember,” Rhys mumbled, casting his eyes down. His mother hadn’t wanted to say much about them, and Rhys hadn't cared enough to press for information. It hadn't taken long to learn to hate the marks and Rhys hadn't wanted anything to do with them as a kid, much less learn anything about them. It wasn’t until he was older that he’d realized he should probably learn a few things, but information on sirens was little more than myth and legend.

“Looks like circuitry,” Jack said, digging a hand hard into Rhys' bicep. Rhys flinched and tried to jerk away but Jack's grip was as strong as a steel trap, holding him in place. He dropped it after a thorough inspection and stepped back, putting both hands behind him to lean against the edge of his desk. “All right then, pumpkin. I want you to show me what you've got.”

“Show you . . .?” Rhys asked, still holding his shirt and vest awkwardly in his metal hand.

“The _wings_ , Rhysie, try to keep up,” Jack tsked. “Hacking computers is nice and all, and I'm impressed you can get past Hyperion security since most people who try that end up with their entire systems fried before I toss them out the airlock, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for.” He moved fast behind Rhys, hands coming up to frame his back. His fingers were hard and calloused but warm, pressing gently into Rhys' skin. Rhys waited for them to dig in, for Jack to force his wings up and out, but it didn't come. Jack just traced his hands over his shoulder blades, feeling around the edges.

“No marks,” he said, and there was a lilt in his voice, like this was supposed to be amusing. He patted Rhys' back once and moved away again, standing in front of Rhys to look him in the eye. “All right, get going. Show me what you can do.”

Rhys frowned and squared his shoulders. His anger was spiking again and with it the slow churn of electricity in him, heating under his skin and spreading out like a fiery storm cloud, comforting and warm and quickly turning dangerous the longer Rhys stared at Jack.

“I can't do it on command,” he said, shrugging, trying to ignore how stiff his body had become in just a few moments. “The first time was an accident.”

Jack frowned and crossed his arms. “Then _make_ it happen. I'm not paying you to run your mouth.”

“I can't!” Rhys let his anger flow through his until his tattoos started to glow, fire lighting him up and glowing over his skin. Hot flashes licked over the surface and stung where his skin was pulled taut. Rhys' teeth clicked when he swallowed but he worked through the pain, waiting for Jack to stare down at the marks. “I know how to channel it,” Rhys said quickly, feeling the words slip past his lips like water and he couldn't be sure exactly how much he was saying or whether it was a good idea, but it was too late now. “I have no idea how to summon the wings, I'd never done it before. _This_ is what my powers do when I use them.” He turned his arm over to show off the top of it, the marks burning like white fire as his fury wrapped around him. The rest of his left half glowed too, all his tattoos lit up like a laser light show.

Jack snatched Rhys' arm and pulled him closer, grinning eagerly. “That sure is something,” he muttered, pushing his hand over the blazing hot marks. Rhys jerked away; Jack didn't react to the heat, just kept touching over his skin, looking at the curve and bend of the tattoos against the pale skin.

Rhys swallowed and the question came up before he could think better of it. “What are you planning to do with me?”

Jack eyed him and dropped his arm. He jerked his chin up, eyes narrowed. “Didn't I tell you not to ask me questions? You don't need to know anything about what's going on until we get there.”

“But you're taking me to _Pandora_!” Rhys screeched, his voice ringing out and echoing off the walls with a great timbre of thunder. “You can't just take me away from the only life I've ever known to go running around on a planet we all _hate_!”

There was brightness, and fire, and Rhys' throat was closing up. His eyes snapped open and all he saw was white, liquid light poured over his eyes and filling in the cracks, stopping up his throat until he couldn't even find where his mouth opened. He tried to gasp but his body was gone too, lost somewhere in the abyss while sparks and lightning filled him like a pitcher ready to spill. There was a burning, like scorched earth spreading over skin that came back into being just in time for Rhys to scream.

He dropped. His palms hit the floor, catching Rhys just before his face hit and knocked all of his teeth out. All of his muscles were tense and it took a long moment to figure out that he wasn't breathing. When Rhys opened his mouth it all came in a rush, so fast he got dizzy, and he swayed.

A steady support braced his shoulder. Rhys blinked and looked up, seeing Jack, his expression eager with a wide smile and eyes too bright, green and blue that made Rhys' stomach churn. He tried to speak and nearly choked on the noise, the words catching in his throat and bearing down on anything coherent he could have said.

“There he is,” Jack said, grinning. “I knew you could do it if you just focused.”

The words pinged around Rhys' brain and he blinked again, working over each syllable separately until the meaning hit him like a freight train, slamming into the back of his head.

He jolted out of Jack's grip and stood, looking over his shoulder. The wings were curled around his body, protective and shielding. They were too bright to look at for long, shimmering luminescent electricity formed into prongs that arranged themselves vaguely in the shape of wings, the sparks dancing from his back to the tips and down again. Rhys couldn't stop staring even though it hurt his eyes, mouth open and gaping, his fingers twitching with the need to touch them and the fear of what would happen if he did.

“Fucking hell, that's fantastic!” Jack laughed, loud and booming, and clapped a few times. The sound broke Rhys from his trance and he frowned at Jack. The wings moved with him, as though they really _were_ part of his body, and even with their presence his ECHOeye and mechanical arm were completely fine, unaffected by the sparks and flashes.

“I knew you could do it with the right incentive.” Jack's teeth flashed between his lips and he sauntered up to Rhys, reaching up to touch the wings without a second thought.

Nothing happened. Rhys waited for Jack to be shocked or in pain but he just kept touching them, running his hand down the tip and underneath it. Rhys looked at his fingers, squinting. They weren't quite normal, and after a moment he realized Jack's flesh was jumping, muscles responding to the electricity even if Jack was too wrapped up in himself to bother showing it.

Rhys stepped back. Jack frowned at him but turned his gaze to the wings again, eager eyes darting all over them to take it in. Rhys glanced at the wing next to his metal arm, how it _very_ obviously wasn't affecting the technology, and dared to reach up and touch it.

He could feel the raw power there, the coiled spring of lighting that would jump at his command. It sparked over his prosthetic and curled around the casing, wrapping like a ribbon. Rhys blinked and the sparks were gone, though he could still feel them dancing invisibly over him. His wings flexed, shifting back and away and coming forward again, beating like living things and rustling his hair, his clothes, stirring something in his chest that felt like excitement boiled down to a raw ore. His heart thumped harder and his muscles tensed, breath catching in his throat. It was like all the times Rhys had used his power passively– working through computer systems and diving into electronic devices– dialed up to eleven. He couldn't help his wide smile or the laugh that rolled out of him, his inability to breathe suddenly not an obstacle.

“What's so funny?” Jack asked, his voice far away to Rhys' ears. He blinked and looked around, the world coming back to him slowly. The power edged off, fading slowly, and his wings stilled, folding back, out of the way. Rhys inhaled and the room's air was like a cold biting wind, cutting off the new feeling and slapping him back to reality. He rubbed his eyes, shaking his head.

“Uh,” he said, and coughed. He tried again, “Nothing, nothing is funny. This is all just . . . new.” He looked over his shoulder and could see his wings fading, electricity burning out and trailing off into the room.

“You run out juice?” Jack asked, following Rhys' gaze.

“Something like that.” Rhys waited until they were gone and stretched his arms, feeling the residual warmth in his shoulders, like he'd left a heating pad on there for too long. It stung over his shoulder blades and Rhys flexed until it was mostly gone. His tattoos still glowed with his powers and it took a long minute to get them back to normal, blue and dull without any trace of the heat.

Jack chuckled to himself, leaning on his desk again. “Those wings sure are something, kitten. A lot  _bigger_  than I remember.” He grinned, his shoulders shaking with another laugh.

It took a moment for Rhys to understand the joke, and he frowned sharply. “Was there anything else you wanted from me?”

Jack cocked his head, like he actually had to think about it. He kept grinning in the way that made Rhys shift uncomfortably under the gaze, a piece of meat in the jaws of a tiger. Jack pushed off his desk again, crossing his arms. “Nah, I think I'm good. The real tests are gonna come once we actually end up on Pandora, but I think I've got enough to know what I'm working with.”

“That's . . .” Rhys glared at him. “You never told me what the hell we're _doing_ on Pandora!”

Jack jerked back, like he'd been slapped, and narrowed his eyes. “You're talking awful big for someone with very little leverage.”

Rhys stiffened but didn't back down, staring back at Jack. He could feel his legs trembling and knew he would collapse if he tried to move now, but he had to stand his ground. At the very least, if he was really going to Pandora with Jack, he needed something to tell Vaughn and Yvette, to make sure they didn't worry. Or, that they didn't worry as much as they _could_ be.

Jack watched him and sighed, long and suffering. “I'm working with amateurs,” he muttered. Louder, he said, “Fine! I'll give ya some goddamn details if it'll make you happy!” He moved around his desk, walking fast with heavy, impatient steps, and faced Rhys again, jerking his head towards the wide windows behind his desk. “How much do you know about Pandora?”

Rhys licked his lips and thought of all the videos he'd seen since stepping on Helios, how vehemently anyone spoke against it the moment it was brought up. There were a lot of sources to speak for the fact that Pandora was a barren planet with little value outside of the people that lived on it, and even that was giving it a lot of credit.

“I know it's a shitty place that no one wants to be on,” he said, summing up the consensus as best he could. “I've never been, so I can't speak for it personally.”

“Well, you'd be right,” Jack said, waving a hand at him dismissively. “It's a shit hole, but there's a reason we've got projects going on down there. We're going to go down and . . . supervise some of the work.”

"Work with a vault."

"Something like that."

Rhys waited for an explanation, something to add, but Jack simply stood there with his hands folded neatly behind his back, staring down at the planet outside his window, gaze focus and intent, either unwilling or unable to keep talking.

“So, that's it.” Rhys' shoulders dropped and he made a disbelieving noise in his throat, thinking of everything he could say, but none of it meant anything more than what he'd already said. He'd known Handsome Jack was a man obsessed, he just hadn't expected himself to factor into that obsession. “Fine,” he spat, bending down to grab his clothes and pull them back on. They felt too hot, constricting over his tattoos, but Rhys wasn't about to explore that right now. He waited for Jack to turn around, squaring himself and lifting his chin up as high as he dared. “If you're done with me, I'd like to leave.”

Jack laughed and grinned, turning around again. “Yeah, we're done. Nice wings, Rhysie. Try not to break them in the next couple of weeks.”

Rhys nodded despite himself and frowned at his own reaction, turning and walking jerkily down the steps of the dais. Whatever Jack wanted with him, it had to be top secret; Jack didn't beat around the bush. At least now he knew Jack wanted to hunt for a vault and somehow Rhys was going to help with that. He had something concrete to tell his friends, something more than suspicion and worry. 

Vaughn and Yvette were both at work and Rhys sagged a little once he got inside the apartment. Forcing his wings out had left a burning ache in his shoulders, biting its way down his ribs and sharply stabbing the base of his gut every time he moved. He dropped his bag and went to the fridge, grabbing an ice pack. He hissed as he put it over one shoulder, letting the coolness sink in like a calm rain on a summer day. It wasn't perfect but it helped.

He lay down on the couch and alternated the ice on each shoulder until it was melted, and by then his eyelids were getting heavy so he let himself fall into a soft doze, only vaguely aware of the idle noises around the apartment. He fell into a half-sleep, his dreams prickling the edge of his mind.

The door clicked shut and he blinked, turning over to see Vaughn. He stopped when he saw Rhys, brow furrowing. “Rhys? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Rhys mumbled, reaching behind him to take the ice pack off the couch and toss it onto the coffee table. He blinked a few times as he sat up and yawned, trying to get the sleep out of his system.

“What did Handsome Jack do this time?” Vaughn grumbled, grabbing himself a health bar from the kitchen and sitting next to him. Rhys reached for the remote without thinking, putting on background television to soothe Vaughn's nerves.

With a long, drawn out sigh, Rhys explained what had happened, hesitating around the details of the wings, almost forgetting that Vaughn had no experience with sirens. Rhys had spent his entire life learning about himself bit by bit; he'd heard about the wings despite the fact that they'd never manifested for him before. But this was _all_ new to Vaughn and every word out of Rhys' mouth sounded more and more like actual myth than the suffering of Vaughn's best friend. 

When he finished Vaughn spent a good few minutes gaping at him, and dialed Yvette on his ECHOcomm watch.

The door slammed when she came in and she walked with hard steps, her usual heels traded for flats. Rhys winced; if she'd already taken her work shoes off then she’d been at home, intending to spend the evening watching bad movies and drinking wine.

“This is becoming too common for my liking,” she griped, plopping down in the armchair and crossing her arms. “All right, Rhys, out with it. What happened?”

Rhys blushed and launched into a shorter version of the explanation, letting Vaughn angrily fill in details he tried to skip over. Yvette glared throughout, and when Rhys finished she let out a long hum, thinking over the words.

“You're going to Pandora,” she said finally.

Rhys shrugged. “I can't really say no.”

“That's–” She stood up quickly and looked down at him, her hands on her hips. “Fine, then. Fine. You're going to Pandora with Handsome Jack, this is something that's happening. If that's the case then we need a way to keep in contact with you.”

Her determination made Rhys shrink a little under her gaze and he shrugged unhelpfully. “You can call? ECHOcomm works between here and Pandora.”

“But ECHOcomm is _obvious_.” Yvette's lips thinned and she turned, walking back and forth slowly. “We need to be ready to get you out of there the second there's too much danger. Handsome Jack's not going to like that. We need something we can use without him noticing, something small and easy.”

Vaughn sat up now, frowning at her. “Are you crazy?! We're actually going to let this happen? He could die out there!”

“But Rhys is right.” Yvette came to a hard stop in front of them. “Jack won't let him out of it without some serious fighting, and we're not capable of that, at least not on Helios. He goes to Pandora or he dies at Jack's hands at this point. We've got to do damage control.”

“Oh, jesus.” Vaughn leaned back and dragged his hands down his face, like he was ready for God to take him right then and there. “If we– If we do this, we've got to take every precaution.” He dropped his hands and looked at them both. “There can't be any goofing around.”

“Of course not,” Yvette agreed, nodding. “What can we do that'll let us talk to Rhys without a lot of commotion?”

“I mean . . .” Rhys held up his metal arm, turning the palm over to open the ECHO menu. “This is pretty subtle already, it's literally embedded in my arm. It's not like I have an earpiece or anything.”

“Jack would be able to tell, though.” Yvette put her hand over Rhys', curling the fingers closed to shut off the holographic menu.

Vaughn sat up suddenly, eyes wide. “The eye,” he said, head darting to Rhys. “Your ECHOeye, people can barely tell when it's activated unless they're already standing close to you. We could use it to call you without a video feed.”

Rhys' hand went to his eye reflexively, touching around the temple. “I guess that could work, but are you sure you guys want to do this?” He swallowed, glancing between them. “This could get us all in serious trouble if Jack finds out. He doesn't like people messing with stuff that belongs to him.”

“You don't _belong_ to him,” Vaughn snarled possessively.

“But Handsome Jack thinks that he does.” Yvette moved down, squeezing herself between Vaughn and Rhys on the couch and taking one of their hands each. “That doesn't matter, though. We're going to stay together and do everything we can to help one another, right?” She smiled, small but hopeful. “Besides, there's a silver lining here.”

That made Rhys pause, blinking. “A silver lining to becoming Handsome Jack's pet?”

She looked at him, brow furrowed. “What? Did you not even think about _why_ he was bringing you down there?”

Rhys looked down, lips pursed. “He wants to look for a vault.”

“And you're going with him because . . .?”

"Jack didn't tell me."

Yvette sighed, rolling her eyes. “You two would be lost without me, I swear. Listen, Handsome Jack is  _always_ looking for vaults, right?"

"Yeah," Vaughn said slowly. "That and the eridium are why we have thousands of projects down on Pandora." 

“Yes,” Yvette said, with the tone of a patient kindergarten teacher. “If the one thing Handsome Jack wants more than anything, more than money, more than eridium, is a vault, then why would he suddenly drop his schedule as a CEO of a multi billion dollar company the minute he learned about Rhys and his siren powers?”

“The powers,” Rhys said, and it clicked, the wheels turning quickly in his head. “The siren powers are connected to vaults. Or, Jack thinks they are, I have no idea . . .”

Yvette smiled and patted his hand affectionately. “Exactly. Jack wouldn't drop everything unless he _knew_ there was a shot at a vault, and Rhys is that shot." 

"He's gonna use me." Rhys swallowed thickly.

"Yes, but so are we." Yvette squeezed his hand, her fingers like a warm blanket. "Handsome Jack isn't the only one who wants vault treasures, and you'll be right there with him the _entire_ time. If your powers are somehow connected then you'll be right there if Handsome Jack finds anything." 

Vaughn frowned, now wrinkled with his distaste. "How is that supposed to make any of us feel any better?"

"Holy– are you serious?!" Yvette hissed through her teeth. "Handsome Jack finds a vault. Rhys is with him. All three of us know about it and what we want is a nice soft cushion of money to sleep in for the rest of our lives. Connect the dots." 

Rhys' eyebrows shot up. "Oh. _Oh_. You want us to steal Handsome Jack's bounty?" 

"That's insane!" Vaughn screeched.   
  
"No," Yvette said carefully, "it's the only benefit we're going to get out of Rhys risking his life on that godforsaken planet with Handsome Jack biting at his heels."


	4. Chapter 4

Rhys stood in front of the biggest spaceship he'd ever seen, hands tight around the straps of his bag. He could feel his legs trembling and he swallowed, the lump sticking uncomfortably in his throat.

People around him bustled across the great floor, holding up clipboards and waving their hands to direct others. Some other people with boxes and bags of equipment grumbled and begrudgingly followed instructions, a few of them looking at the spaceship longingly. Rhys would give anything to be in their position, prepping everything for the trip to Pandora without actually _going_.

Above them, Handsome Jack commanded the entire affair. He stood on the raised platform that curved around the edges of the room, shouting orders and talking on his ECHOcomm. Far too often someone came up to him to speak and then hurriedly skittered away from the bite in his tone.

Rhys leaned against the wall of the lower part of the room, where the spaceship was nestled on large tracks and employees struggled to get ready as quickly as Jack told them. Rhys had waited two weeks for this, continuing to show up at his day job when he could and gathering together an ‘essentials pack’ for the trip. He had two changes of clothes, his hair gel, plenty of cover up for the exposed parts of his tattoos, and a couple books. He was never much of a reader but if they were going to be traipsing across Pandora now was probably a decent time to start.

He adjusted his pack again and watched a woman run by, holding a checklist in steady hands and speaking under her breath. She walked up the the side of the spaceship and craned her neck to look it over. Other people were running in and out of the doors at the top, perched precariously on the ladder that went up to the cockpit. The rockets for the ship were huge, hulking things that would be disposed of once they got out of Helio's artificial gravitational pull.

Jack had actually suggested they use moonshots, rocketing themselves off one small canister at a time, but the head engineer had apparently dismissed that as too wasteful and less convenient. Jack's entire expedition team could fit into the ship they were taking, with a smaller supply ship to follow after, and they had all the equipment they needed to digistruct what they couldn't pack once they landed on the surface.

“Hey, Rhysie!”

Rhys jerked. Above him, Jack frowned impatiently. “Get the hell up here, we're not boarding for another hour!”

Sighing, Rhys shoved off the wall and took the short stairs up to the walkway, careful to keep several feet of distance between himself and Jack.

Jack closed that gap, wrapping his arms enthusiastically over Rhys' shoulders. Rhys grunted as he was pulled down to Jack's height, gaze directed back to the ships as if he hadn't already been staring at them for the past twenty minutes. “Look at it, kiddo,” Jack said, pleasure rippling through his voice. “Those babies were made just for me. Soon we'll be on Pandora and then it's goodbye boring, mundane life. You'll have the greatest adventure you could wish for.” He released Rhys and grinned at him. “Really, you should be thanking me.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Rhys rubbed his neck where it was sore and hoisted his bag higher on his back. “You have a plan for what we're actually going to _do_ once we get there, right? We're not just going to run around randomly?”

“I've got a few clues about where we're going,” Jack said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don't doubt me, cupcake, this project has been years in the making. We just needed the right catalyst to kick it off. Congrats on being exactly that.”

Rhys made a displeased noise in his throat but Jack didn't pay it any attention, looking gleefully over the spaceship and the people running around it. He leaned forward over the railing and gripped it tight with his gloved hands, mask twisting with his smile. “It's beautiful, cupcake. I'm never disappointed by just how much my fucking money can buy me.”

Snorting, Rhys shook his head. Jack turned suddenly to look at him, and Rhys raised a brow. “What?”

“You're only bringing one bag?”

“Uh, yeah?” Rhys hefted his backpack. “I'm packing light, essentials only. I suppose you're bringing as much as you can possibly carry?”

Jack rolled his eyes and looked over the room again, leaning heavy on the railing. “I'm taking enough to not make my life a living hell on that damn planet, yeah. I'm not stupid, Rhysie, this isn't some kind of vacation. We've got work to do the second we land.” He looked at Rhys again, eyes lingering over his left arm.

Rhys reflexively shifted his arm back, out of the way. Jack chuckled and looked over the spaceship again.

Too soon, everyone was climbing on board. Rhys blinked his ECHOeye on briefly, scanning the ship, but all he got were details he didn't understand. There was already another option on the external menu to pick up calls without activating the video function in his hand, a new feature Rhys had asked his mechanic for during his pre-trip check-in. He’d gotten an odd look for it, but his mechanic was good and the function was just a matter of turning off automatic video pick up and adding an extra menu to his eye's screen.

He hovered over the option now, but closed out without calling either of them. Vaughn and Yvette had said goodbye to him this morning, not wanting a parting scene in front of Jack. He was supposed to call as soon as he could when they landed on Pandora to assure them that he wasn't dead. Rhys sincerely hoped that that would be possible and that the team wouldn't end up burning away in Pandora's atmosphere.

Jack waved for Rhys to follow him down, barking orders at everyone along the way. Rhys walked behind him with fast steps, glancing at the crew around them. No one knew he was a siren, as far as he could tell. They didn't look at Rhys the way people might when they found out the big secret. Knowing Jack, he'd want to keep it as much under wraps as he could until they needed him.

Strapping into the passenger seat on the ship was possibly one of the scariest things Rhys had done in his life, up to and including showing his true nature to Jack. The seatbelts restricted him so much that he felt like he couldn’t breathe and Rhys gripped the straps hard, forcing himself to take air in and let it out slowly through his nose. Jack sat up front with the pilots, laughing and chatting with them, occasionally leaning forward to flick a button before the pilots could reach it. Every time he did it Rhys flinched nervously, though it was obvious that Jack knew what he was doing. He'd flown to Pandora multiple times to hunt down vault hunters and bandits, and check on Hyperion projects.

When everything was in order and they finally prepared to take off, Rhys' stomach felt like it fell out through the end of his spine. He leaned as far back in his seat as he could manage, hands gripping the straps of his restraints so hard that the knuckles of his flesh hand went white, his metal hand straining its joints.

Jack just threw his head back and crowed, “Here we go, baby!”

A panel in the ceiling slid open to let them launch through, the ship shaking with the force of the rockets shooting it upward. Rhys closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. He was leaving Helios. He was going to Pandora. He'd have to be constantly vigilant from here on out, watching everyone, but especially Jack.

The ship continued to shake uncomfortably as it left Helios' artificial gravity. Once properly in space it stabilized, and Rhys breathed out hard, glancing out of the window by his seat.

He'd been in space before. He hadn't been born on Helios; it was necessary to travel a bit to get to the space station. But he'd been a young and over-eager intern with a slip of paper that said he was somehow qualified to start working under Handsome Jack's indirect employ, and Rhys couldn't remember much of anything about the trip except how impossibly excited he'd been to go to Helios.

Now he could see space again, the vastness of it stretching in every direction. He couldn't see Helios from this angle but Pandora was visible, big and bright with a large, glowing crack down one side. The ship would slowly angle its way down toward the planet and before he knew it they'd be down there, along with every other life form on Pandora that was supposed to want to eat him alive.

Jack talked animatedly throughout the trip, first talking ship jargon with the pilots and then brushing over their plan of action for when they landed.

The landing itself was rough. Rhys clung to his seat straps as they rumbled through the atmosphere, the ship’s hull taking the brunt of the force. Jack yelled through it, even going so far as to _fist pump_. Rhys rolled his eyes as much as he could through being thrashed in his seat like a gutted fish.

There wasn't much time to admire Pandora's surface before they were crashing into it, the entire inside of the ship jerking with the impact. They slid across the rough desert plain and slowed to an eventual stop. There was a moment where no one breathed.

“Holy _shit_ , yeah!” Jack said, laughing. “I fucking forgot how awesome that feels!” He unbuckled his strap and strode towards the back of the ship, opening the door without a care.

A woman at the front yelled and unbuckled herself. “Jack! We have to wait for the supply ship and check for wildlife! Jack, sir, please!”

Rhys shook his head and got out of his seat, wobbling on unsteady legs. He held his hands out and waited for his balance to come back while everyone else got up and made their way out of the ship. Rhys lingered behind, picking up his bag and shifting nervously on his feet.

Once everyone was out, he flicked on his ECHOeye and dialed Yvette.

She picked up immediately. “Rhys? Is that you? Are you there already?”

“We landed safely,” Rhys said, low and quiet to avoid anyone overhearing him. “We're waiting for the supply ship that was following and then we're heading out into the wilds, I think. We've gotta find what Jack's looking for before he can actually use me the way he wants.”

“Thank God,” Yvette breathed, and in the background Rhys thought he heard Vaughn yelling something. Yvette said, “Rhys, how often do you think you can call?”

“Uh, once a day maybe? Maybe less than that? I'll have to go to the bathroom and there's not a lot besides rough terrain where we are, I can probably get away with it.”

Yvette made a disgusted noise that sounded distorted through the crackle of the phone. Rhys couldn't see her face but his lips tipped up just imagining it. “Don't talk to me while you're peeing if you can avoid it,” she begged.

“Rhys!” Vaughn said, voice tinny, and then louder, “Are you okay? Did anything happen?”

Rhys chuckled quietly. “Everything's fine so far, Vaughn. I–”

Whatever Rhys was going to say next was cut off by a loud boom, followed quickly by more of Jack's shouts. Rhys yelped and ducked his head, waiting for the disaster. Yvette and Vaughn shouted into his ear but he couldn't make out the words yet.

The boom came to a head a few seconds later when the supply ship crashed into the planet and set the ground rumbling. Rhys almost fell and braced himself on the nearest seat, waiting out the end of the crash. He could feel his teeth vibrating with the force of it, clacking loudly and sending sharp pains up his temple.

“What the hell was that?” Vaughn screeched.

Rhys hurried to stand and catch his breath. “Yeah, yeah, just the supply ship. They'll probably start unloading soon. I have to go, but I promise I'll call you both as often as I can, all right?”

A long pause, and then Yvette said, “All right,” while Vaughn mumbled, “Yeah, sure.”

Rhys hung up on them and finally walked out of the ship, holding his bag tight as he made his first step onto Pandoran soil.

It was rough and rocky, just like all the videos on Helios had shown. Rhys bounced a couple times on the dirt to get a sense of it, and looked around. The rest of the crew had settled not too far off, Jack talking loudly and pointing this way and that. The supply ship looked about a half mile off, a long walk but pretty damn precise given that a few degrees shift in space could have sent them miles and miles apart. Rhys walked up to the group slowly, quietly.

“We need cars digistructed as fast as we can get them,” Jack said, waving toward the supply ship. “We're set to head to the nearest town and follow up on a few leads, and after that it's a matter of sniffing out what we're looking for and not letting people bullshit us. Keep a gun on you and have it loaded at all times, the bandits here will kill you first and not even bother to ask questions.”

Everyone nodded and started to drift, tending to their separate duties. Rhys hovered awkwardly near Jack's shoulder, moving his bag to shift the weight, his clothes and books jumbling around inside it. If he were lucky he could get enough loot from Jack's vault to keep himself and his friends afloat without worry about Hyperion status, but right now he was focused on surviving.

Jack looked at him sharply. “Oh, yes, our siren. How are ya holding up, kitten?”

The pet name made Rhys' lips purse and he shrugged, looking away. “It was a wild ride. I'm trying to get my bearings. Is . . .” He paused, glancing over the Pandoran horizon. It was desert as far as he could tell. He'd seen videos, pictures, all painting Pandora as a wasteland not worth living on. He'd believe it, looking over the barren landscape. “Where are we going first?”

“A town that looked promising.” Jack turned his gaze to where the supply ship had landed. They'd packed a few compact motorcycles on the first ship and there were people riding over to get everything set up and start digistructing cars on site for the rest of the team. Rhys could already picture what kind of car Jack would have. He'd have to ride with him so Jack could keep his precious siren as close as possible.

Jack talked a little about where they were going, a small town a few miles off one of Hyperion's mining sites. Apparently there were rumors about an eridium source that the mine hadn't found yet and the locals were scrounging around to find it before Hyperion did. Jack wanted to follow the trail because, as he said, where there was abundant amounts of eridium, there would be a vault.

The words made Rhys pause and glare up at Jack. “You really think we can hunt down a vault?"

Jack just shrugged, watching the lights from the supply ship where the crew was starting to set up equipment and digistruct vehicles. “I'm  _me,_ ” he said, like it was the only necessary explanation. 

Rhys scowled but Jack wasn’t even looking at him and he quickly gave up.

The cars the team built were mostly big vans that could hold a lot. A few were compact, meant for getting into smaller places to explore, and one in particular was a very showy sports car. Rhys raised an eyebrow at it as he and Jack started a quick walk to the supply ship on foot. It wasn't hard to guess who that one belonged to.

“All right, peons, listen up!” Jack said, waving a hand. “I want us out of here in a half hour. Check everything over twice and mark this place on the map, we're coming back in a week to restock.”

Rhys looked between the ship and the empty desert. “Won't bandits try to come and steal what we leave here?”

Jack snorted and dug into his pocket. In it was what looked like a remote, made of heavy, sleek metal. “That is what electric fences are for,” he said with a grin.

Rhys leaned back, blinking a couple times as he stared at the remote. Handsome Jack was on Pandora and he was _not_ messing around.

Not that Rhys had expected him to, but Jack's excitement during the landing had caught him off guard. He’d spent so much time thinking of Jack as an all important, imposing figure. On the ship he’d seemed so . . . human. The conflict made a strange feeling settle in the back of his mind that looked too much like compassion for Rhys' comfort, and he waved the feeling away while the team got set up and everyone prepared to leave for their first destination.

Jack's car was fast, much faster than the rest of their vehicles. Rhys plopped into the passenger seat while Jack drove, the tinted windows dulling the harsh light of the Pandoran sun. Rhys clutched his bag tight, long legs stretched out as far as they could. His seat didn't go back far enough for his liking and he knew if he stayed in the seat for more than a couple hours his knees would start to hurt. He focused instead on staring out the window, face blank and lips set into a thin line.

He had to help Jack find the vault. Jack would probably blame Rhys and kill him if they didn't find it in a certain time period; weeks or months, depending. Rhys clutched his bag tight and thought of what kind of loot he'd be able to grab and abscond with. 

He kept this in mind as they approached the first town, the edges of metal buildings and a large gate visible in the distance. The rest of Jack's team were far behind, unable to keep up with his car, but they all had the coordinates on digital maps. Rhys didn't, because he wasn't technically part of the team, so he relied on the slowly expanding line of the town to determine how close they were.

“Looks like a shit hole, doesn't it?” Jack said suddenly, when they'd driven close enough to see the shapes of the roofs and the colors of the buildings. “None of the towns here on Pandora are that great. Some of them have alcohol that burns your entire fucking throat but that's probably the only good thing I've found.”

“Great,” Rhys said flatly. “I'm sure we'll be doing lots of drinking.”

Jack snickered and raised a hand, giving Rhys what he probably thought was a gentle punch on the shoulder. Rhys winced and rubbed the spot, frowning at Jack.

“Listen,” Jack said. “I want you to be alert for anything related to the vault. Use your wings. Get a feeling, tell me anything you find.” His eyes flicked to Rhys and back to the road. “ _Anything_ , I mean it. If I find out you've been hiding stuff I'm going to fucking strangle you.”

Rhys leaned away, eyes wide. The denial was on the tip of his tongue, ready to cut into Jack and tell him how much of a controlling asshole he was, but Jack was like an angry toddler, who happened to also carry guns. Saying no would only set him off. “Yeah,” Rhys said slowly. “Sure. I'll let you know.”

He crossed his arms and waited as they drove up to the town, passing through it's tall, thin, shabby excuse for a gate. It was made of flat metal panelling and was only a formality to mark the town's border rather than any kind of defense. Jack slowed when they got inside and drove until he found a wider road, a poor excuse for a main street, and parked the car. Rhys followed him swiftly out, looking around the town properly for the first time.

It was hardly a shining example of . . . well, anything. The buildings were shabby, made of patchwork materials that ranged from dull brown to slightly less dull green. The roads were dirt, packed down with use instead of paved or maintained in any kind of way. Some of the stores had signs hanging loosely over the doors but most of them were nondescript; only locals would know what each one was. 

Rhys started to follow Jack but Jack put his hand up. “Nah, nah, cupcake. I've got shit to do, I don't need to be worrying about you. The other cars are arriving just about . . . now,” and as he said it, Rhys heard the telltale engines and turned to see a couple vans pulling up behind them. Hyperion employees stepped out, adjusting sunglasses or thick vests they'd worn to protect against both the desert heat and wayward bullets. “Stay with them,” Jack said. “Explore a bit but don't go anywhere without at least one person backing you up, preferably two. You gotta look for hints, anything that makes your powers go wonky.”

“Wonky?” Rhys said, raising a brow.

Jack shrugged, uncaring, and walked up to the first van. He said something in a low voice that Rhys couldn't hear but he pointed to Rhys and it was easy to guess what he was saying. Rhys waited patiently as two people, a pale man and a dark skinned woman, walked up to him. “There,” Jack said. “Your own personal bodyguards courtesy of Hyperion. Feels pretty good, huh?”

“It feels like something,” Rhys said.

Jack rolled his eyes and waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever, cupcake. I got business to attend to. Walk around a bit, try not to chat the locals up too much, be back here in two hours.”

Rhys frowned and nodded sharply. Jack didn't seem to take notice, picking up the pistol from his belt and swinging it around on one hand as he turned and started walking down a side street.

“Is he always this insufferable?” Rhys asked, looking at the people that were now assigned to guarding him.

The man shrugged but the woman's eyes narrowed. Rhys blinked. “So, are you just going to follow me?”

“We'll advise against going to especially shifty areas, but yes,” the woman said, cocking the gun in her hands. “Wherever you feel like you should go, siren boy.”

“Uh, Rhys,” he said. “Just call me Rhys.”

The woman smiled and tipped her sunglasses down, showing dark brown eyes. “Melissa.”

“Bradley,” the man offered.

Rhys nodded and picked a direction at random, almost opposite to the street Jack had taken. All of them looked similar, winding roads that went between the buildings and didn't seem to have a particular layout but were easy to follow. It seemed like the city had been built around where it was most convenient for people to walk; none of the streets were very long and each one had at least one or two shops sitting on it between shabby houses and long expanses of sand-covered walls.

Rhys didn't touch the walls and kept his eyes peeled for anything useful. Jack had told him to be alert but he had no idea what he was looking for. His long sleeves made him sweat lightly under the bright sun and Rhys felt gently for his tattoos underneath, letting bits and pieces of his power feed back into him. He'd used make-up to cover his hand and what parts of blue were exposed on his chest and upper shoulder, so the only way to see the marks would be by tearing up his shirt sleeves.

He wished he had armor like the bodyguards. He didn't doubt a bandit's ability to shred his clothes to get to his wallet. Or his heart.

There wasn't much to see in the town. Rhys didn't want to go into any of the stores and he was sure Jack was taking care of the issue of asking locals what they knew. He had to admit that the town was a lot more peaceful than he'd anticipated. From what the people on Helios said he'd half expected for gangs to come rolling out of the hills and shoot them the minute they landed, or people to jump out of alleys ready to skin him alive. But right now the town was just quiet and any people he did see ignored him, one or two sparing a glance and moving on quickly.

Maybe Rhys had Jack's entourage to thank for the fact that he hadn't died immediately after setting foot on the planet.

He wasn't really getting anywhere, wandering around aimlessly. If Rhys was going to find anything he would probably have to start looking at some of the stores. The town itself was mostly run down buildings and the occasional dumpster full of various bits of trash. Rhys glanced at one as he passed, the putrid smell rolling off of it and hitting him hard. He gagged and hurried forward, hoping the bodyguards would keep up at their own pace.

There was a small building just ahead, sitting on the corner of two streets. It had a pale glowing sign of some animal Rhys didn't recognize but that looked like it had wings of some sort. The glow was dull in the sunlight but it was obviously a sign for a bar, some of the wires bent in the crude shape of a drink. 

He glanced at his bodyguards. “Do you care if we go in there?”

Bradley shrugged. Melissa said, “No, but be careful. The locals will know you're Hyperion the second they see you. And you know how they feel about us.”

Rhys did indeed know, from the hundreds of advertisements about remodeling the planet and steamrolling past the Pandoran locals.

He walked inside the bar, stopping at the door with the bodyguards at his heels. It was a small place, almost abandoned at this time of day. There was only one customer that Rhys could see, a woman with brown skin and a particularly fancy white hat tipped back on her head. She glanced up when Rhys walked in, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

Rhys stared at the hat and then her face, slim and pretty but clearly dangerous. He moved on quickly. There was another woman tending the bar, a dirty rag in her hands as she scrubbed uselessly at stains on the counter. She had dark skin and thick locs tucked under a headband, and looked up to meet Rhys' eyes as he walked in.

“Hello, how can I . . .” She stopped, lips parted, eyeing Rhys' vest.

Rhys glanced down at it, made of black material with hexagon prints and a small Hyperion logo on the chest. It hadn't been his first choice but all of his jackets had Hyperion logos, and Jack had mentioned it being the hot season. Rhys had brought the coolest thing he had that would still trap some warmth during chilly Pandoran nights.

He looked back at the bartender, who was frowning, her arms crossed. “We don't serve Hyperion,” she said sharply.

Melissa raised a brow and shifted her weight to look fully at the bartender. “Is that so? Our money isn't good enough for this place?”

“Money that's stolen off the lives of poor Pandoran people isn't good enough, no,” the woman snarled, lips lifted like she might actually try to go for Melissa's throat. “I suggest you get the hell out of here.”

Rhys lifted his hands defensively and said, “All right, all right!" His heart was in his throat already, watching the woman's hands twitch as she set them down on the counter. "Listen, I just have one question, okay?”

The bartender leaned back, looking down her nose at him as much as she could, nearly a foot shorter than him.

“Listen,” Rhys said slowly. “I'm part of a team from Helios. I just wanted to know if you've seen any weird activity with eridium stuff lately. Anything out of the ordinary.”

“Eridium?” Her eyes narrowed. “All you want is to mine the stuff and kill everyone who lives here. If you don't get out of this bar in the next two seconds–”

“Everything all right, babe?”

A door at the back of the bar opened and a man walked down a set of stairs. He was tall, blond, arms thick and his pale skin tanned. He looked up and Rhys saw a large blue piercing in his nose, clashing with his skin. His dark eyes practically glowed with immediate anger, narrowing on Rhys and turning to the bartender. “Sasha, who's this joke and his goons?”

“A Hyperion,” Sasha said icily, crossing her arms. “He's asking about eridium.”

The man's eyes turned sharply to Rhys, lips lifting in a sneer. “Is that _so_?” he said, stalking up to Rhys. Rhys backed up quickly. Melissa and Bradley stepped in front of him, guns out before the man could get too close.

He stopped and chuckled. “Oh, okay, we're doing it this way. Look.” He reached for his belt, pulling out his own pistol. “I don't want a mess in my bar and you Hyperion creeps are more trouble than you're worth. Just get out and don't come back, all right?”

Even as he said it, he brushed a hand over his ear, like he was brushing his spiked hair out of the way. Rhys narrowed his eyes and blinked, flicking his ECHOeye on as subtly as he could. Something yellow glowed in his enhanced vision; a phone, curled around his ear. He'd hit something on it.

“Are we going to be ambushed the second we leave?” Rhys asked, shutting his ECHO off.

The man's eyes flickered but he blinked the expression away quickly. “Just get the hell out.”

“Don't shoot them, August,” Sasha said with a defeated sigh. “They'll just send in replacements. Listen, we don't know anything about eridium, okay? Aren't you corporate snakes supposed to be the ones who know all about it, with your stupid mining projects?” She stared at Rhys directly, her gaze hard. When Rhys didn't say anything and the bodyguards didn't back down, she said, “You think it's so funny, killing people for intel. I _dare_ you to try shooting up in here.”

Rhys' brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to say something but then Bradley was next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder and steering him away, toward the door.

“Don't follow,” Melissa said sharply, backing out with her gun still on them. “I saw your phone. If we find someone tracking us they'll be dead in one shot, got it?”

August's lips thinned but he nodded. Melissa shut the door loudly behind them, the raspy bang echoing in the small street.

Rhys put a hand over his heart and willed it to calm down. He'd never had a gun pointed directly at him, unless he counted the fingergun fights on Helios. Real guns were reserved for big show downs and stolen promotions, and Rhys hadn't climbed high enough on the corporate ladder to be a target yet. Staring down the barrel of August's pistol had left him shaking, his breathing stuttered.

“Let's move on,” Bradley said, keeping his gun out and ready. “They weren't any help. Should have expected as much from the locals.”

“What was . . .” Rhys glanced back at the bar as they walked away. “Christ.” He looked at the backs of the bodyguards but they were paying attention to the street, steering them toward a different part of town where the roads were bigger and there were more people walking around.

The words about killing locals stuck with Rhys, clinging in his throat like viscous paste that climbed up every time he tried to swallow it back down. He ignored it, looking for something else that might be of use to them.

The locals didn't have the patience for them, weaving around the group. Thankfully no one wanted to pull a gun on them again and Rhys watched their surroundings carefully, trying to find something that would help in their hunt for a vault. He tried listening to his powers, too, but they were near silent, forcing him to navigate on his own. 

Soon it was time to meet back with Jack. The town square was crowded but the town itself was small and there were only a few people loitering as Rhys and the guards made their way back to Jack and his own entourage of Hyperion employees. He was talking on his ECHO but he hung up as they approached, looking hopefully at Rhys with shining eyes. “Well? Did you find anything?”

“No,” Rhys said, shaking his head. “The locals weren't very friendly and I didn't see anything. I don't know that there's much to find here, Jack.”

“Eh!” Jack said, like the noise of a buzzer, lifting a hand to hold one finger up. “That's where you're wrong, Rhysie. My lead worked out just fine.” He met Rhys' eyes, his own gleaming. “There's a mine not far from here that's apparently got the animals acting weird and none of the bandits will go near it. If bandits are afraid of it, it's definitely powerful. We're heading out, should be there in a few days.”

“Wha– just like that?!”

Jack grinned and laughed. “You don't get where I am in life by wasting time, Rhys. Come on.” He waved a hand and started walking, back to where they'd left the cars. “We're burning daylight, I wanna be a couple hundred miles out by tonight.”

Rhys walked fast behind him, making up for Jack's quick pace with his own long strides. If it weren't for the way they were dressed and the fact that it was, well, _Handsome Jack_ wandering through their town, Rhys would have been more surprised that he wasn't attacked on sight. As it was, they just got a lot of dirty looks.

He kept glancing at the buildings as they walked, eyes tracing over the deep cuts in the metal walls and roofs, the blood and graffiti smeared along the lengths. None of it painted a pretty picture but it was like watching a car crash, Rhys couldn't bring himself to look away.

In the corners of small alleys were dumpsters, filled with scrap metal and what Rhys could only hope was rotten animal meat and not . . . something far worse. He glanced at one as they strode past, and hesitated.

Something was carved on the wall just behind a dumpster, some of kind symbol. Rhys' instincts yelled at him to turn around and keep following Jack, but there was something about the symbol that sparked in the back of his mind, the way it was bright even in the dark shadows of the alley and easy to see behind the shabby dumpster.

Rhys walked toward it quickly, weaving around a few bodyguards and into the small alcove. A couple people yelled at him but he kept walking until he was on the other side of the dumpster and the symbol was in full view.

It was a circle, indented into the side of the building against which the dumpster sat. Inside the circle was what looked like a curved, upside down letter V.

The vault symbol. Rhys reached for it, brushing his fingers over it.

A lightning bolt zapped down his finger and shot through his arm, ringing through pieces of his skin like a map of his veins and fading at the crest of his neck. Rhys yelped and clasped his hand to his neck, rubbing it furiously. The after effects lingered, a sharp sting each time he moved his flesh arm. His tattoos were warm, too warm.

“Rhys!” A woman, another bodyguard, skidded to a stop at the edge of the alcove. “What the hell do you think you're doing? There could be bandits or assassins hiding in a filthy alley like this!”

Rhys nodded along to her words, hissing quietly to himself as the pain slowly ebbed away, the sting of it ringing through him like a bell through his blood. It made the back of his neck itch, discomfort worming through him, and Rhys, with a final look at the vault symbol, hurried out of the alley.

Jack was standing stubbornly on the street, one hand on his gun. “Find something fun, cupcake?” he said, cross. “It oughta be worth it for slowing me down.”

Rhys scowled, rubbing his metal arm over his flesh one. “Nothing,” he said. “A vault symbol, someone dug it into the side of a building.”

“Oh, yeah, those.” Jack turned, already bored with Rhys' distractions. “People graffiti those all over, something about the symbol having some kind of meaning. The idiots who live here can't seem to decide if it's good luck or bad luck but it doesn't mean anything for us. That shit isn't actually related to the vaults.”

Rhys looked back at the alley, swallowing. The pain he'd felt had been real, strong and fiery like sharp lightning. Maybe someone had booby trapped the symbol. Rhys wouldn't put it past the people who lived on this godforsaken planet.

They went back to their cars and left the town, Rhys still riding shotgun with Jack. The team collected back together on the road and Jack uploaded directions to their new destination on everyone's maps.

Rhys' arm was still sore from the sting and he worked his fingers to loosen the tension as subtly as he could while Jack sped over the terrain.

It wasn't all desert, surprisingly. They turned through a mountain pass and there was suddenly grass, sparse and filled with rocks though it was. Rhys watched the terrain and thought of Helios with its manufactured temperatures and artificial gravity, the only good bits of nature the ones they planted in pots. He had a small succulent garden in his room that he'd asked Vaughn to look after while he was away. Vaughn had looked nervous and unsure, but that might have been the prospect of Rhys leaving rather than the plants.

They spent the day driving through the mountain region, going at speeds that made Rhys' stomach turn. Jack grinned and shouted in celebration every time they went over a jump. Rhys quietly stewed and prayed for the next few meters of land to be flat enough to give him a break.

A few days travel, Jack had said. They wouldn't be reaching the mine today. Rhys tried to relax a little, knowing that, and pulled a book out of his bag. The ride was too bumpy to read with much consistency, though, and eventually he gave up, putting his head back on the seat and closing his eyes.

Sleep came easier than he would have thought, and when Rhys opened his eyes again it was dark. The stars were bright through the opened sunroof and Jack was hopping out, slamming the car door behind him. Rhys sat up groggily and blinked, fumbling with the door handle and getting out to follow Jack.

Their team had already started setting up a camp, piling up tents that looked more expensive and luxurious than tents had any right to be. They were almost as tall as a small house and made with reinforced material, their walls pulled taut and firm and thick tarps spread over them and nailed into the ground with heavy wood posts.

It seemed a good as time as any, with Jack yelling directions again and not paying attention to him. Rhys slipped away and blinked his ECHOeye on, switching to the phone menu.

Yvette picked up on the second ring. “Rhys? Is everything all right?”

Rhys blew out a long breath. “I'm fine. We had a long day looking around for hints of Jack's precious vault. Seems like we're going a lot off of hints and legends.”

“That doesn't surprise me,” Yvette said, her tone flat. “I've been doing some research on some of the stories around Helios. This isn't Jack's first attempt with a vault, and his last try was . . . pretty damn bad.”

Rhys' heart skipped a beat and he swallowed thickly. “How bad? Bad, like, 'people died' bad?”

“Well, yeah, he–”

“Rhysie!” Jack's voice snapped, faint but still sharp from the camp. “Where the hell did you go? If you ran off I'm gonna get my fucking sniper rifle!”

“Shit,” Rhys said, cutting Yvette off. “I have to go, tell me about this later. Tell Vaughn I'm fine and to be sure he doesn't leave the TV on all night, okay?” He hung up before Yvette could answer, walking out from behind the boulder he'd ducked under. “I'm fine!” he said, walking up to the camp. Jack was standing in the middle of it, eyes narrowed. “Can't I go to the bathroom without people watching me like a hawk?” Rhys complained.

“That's what _that_ is for,” Jack said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to point to the portable toilet. “Don't wander off without telling anyone, there's bandits all the fuck over this place. You never know when one's gonna pop out and rip your head off and then I'll be without a siren.”

Rhys pursed his lips, nostrils flaring. “Or, you know, you could care about me dying because you don't actually want me to die.”

“Of course I don't want you dying, you're too important,” Jack said, waving a hand dismissively. Rhys imagined him accidentally smacking the point that had gone completely over his head.

With Yvette at least brought up to speed, Rhys took the time to settle in one of the plush portable chairs in front of the tent that had Jack's initials sewn into the front of it. He took a book out, hoping to finally get some reading done and distract himself from the very long day until it was a reasonable hour to go to bed.

People moved around him, not paying attention to Rhys. The crew put lamps in the ground, smacking the stakes into the rough dirt and turning on the electric lamp heads. More electric appliances were brought to the center of camp to start cooking dinner and Rhys let himself savor the smell of fresh food as he turned the pages in his book.

Jack started to walk toward the fire and stopped, halting so fast that his boots skidded on the dirt. The noise made Rhys look up. Jack was standing still with his eyes narrowed, nostrils flared and hands curling into fists.

There wasn't time to think or even move before Jack ripped a gun off his belt and fired it just over a rising ledge of rocks that loomed on one side of camp. The bullet skidded over the rock and hit another cliff face behind it, exploding. Rhys flinched and stood, moving beside Jack to see what the threat was.

He couldn't see anything at first, under the quickly fading light of day and the flat grays of the rocks. Rhys blinked and turned his ECHOeye on, catching the two glowing yellow bodies at the top of the ridge of rocks. They were barely there, just the hint of two heads, and they ducked down fast. Rhys blinked his ECHO off and saw only the dull rocks again, no sight of whoever had been spying on them.

“Someone get those goddamn bandits!” Jack snarled. “Or else I will!”

No less than five people scrambled up immediately, and three more followed them after a brief hesitation.

They ran up the ridge with guns out and hunted around while Jack tisked and went back to the food, pulling a piece of sausage right off the pan and dropping it into his mouth. Rhys grimaced, his eyes still on the rock ledge. “Are they going to kill whoever they find?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?” Jack asked, rolling his eyes and dropping another sausage into his mouth. Rhys ignored the loud chewing noises, eyes fixed on the rocks. “Of course they'll kill them,” Jack continued, his tone lilting into slightly gleeful. “These damn bandits, they sure make it easy to take 'em out, spying on us in groups.”

“You could get a little less thrill out of this,” Rhys pointed out.

“And not laugh when their bodies roll down the hill? No friggin' way, cupcake.”

They waited. They could hear Jack's people scrambling over the rocks, catching glimpses of them over the cliff face, but there was no barrage of bullets or screams of panic and death. Rhys hadn't actually seen anyone killed in front of him and he had to admit to a bit of morbid curiosity about just how many bullets it might take. Pandora was a harsh place but Helios could match them shot for shot with weaponry.

Ten or so minutes passed like that, and the team members came back down, sliding over rocks and hopping down from the edge, back into camp. There wasn't any blood or a body with them. A short freckled man stepped up to Jack, shrugging apologetically. “No trace of them, sir. They must have made their way out through a passage in the rocks and driven off.”

Jack frowned and clucked his tongue. “Jesus, can't you morons do anything right? Am I gonna have to do everything myself?”

The man shrugged, looking contrite, but Jack just sighed and clocked him upside the head. The hit wasn't especially harsh but the man cowered anyway, hissing sharply and backing away, muttering apologies under his breath.

Rhys' protective instinct flared and he glared at Jack. “Can't you just  _talk_ to people like everyone else?"

“Eh,” Jack shrugged, already pulling a gun from his belt again. “People don't listen as well if you don't show 'em what you're made of. Now stay here, cupcake, daddy's got work to do.”

He was gone before Rhys could say anything else to stop him. Not that it would have worked anyway. Rhys went back to his chair and slumped down, waiting for the inevitable gunshots and cries of bandits being shot to death.

But it never came. An half hour passed, then an hour, and Rhys picked up his book again. When dinner was done he got a plate and ate slowly, blanching a little at the taste of freeze-dried food that the team had attempted to bring back to life. It needed more spices. Rhys started to miss Vaughn's cooking, slowly clearing his plate.

Enough time passed that Rhys was actually starting to get worried. There were mumbles among the team, people wondering if Jack had gone on yet another adventure without them. Rhys alternated between standing and sitting, glancing over the rocks to see if he could catch a glimpse of that swooping hair or leather jacket.

He shouldn't be worried. It was Handsome Jack. Even if he did die, Rhys wasn't responsible for worrying. Jack had trapped him here. It would just be what he deserved if he ventured out into the desert and ended up shot in the face by bandits brave enough to try and spy on their camp.

But Jack came back. Like he always did.

It was late and everyone was tired. Rhys had curled up in his chair, waiting. He jumped when he heard heavy boots scraping over rocks, turning to see Jack walking into camp, a gun slung over his shoulder, hair out of place, lips set in a thin line.

A few people looked up but Jack walked past them, past Rhys, into his tent. Rhys waited but didn't hear anything, and ventured inside.

Jack had sat down and taken his coat off, and was in the middle of pulling his sweater off, too. Rhys froze, heart thumping hard in his chest. “Uh, Jack?”

Jack turned sharply, eyes narrowed. For a half second Rhys thought he might have taken off his mask with everything else, but no, it was still there, just inhuman enough to be unsettling. “What,” he spat out.

“Are you . . . okay?”

“Pfft.” Jack shook his head and turned around again, yanking his yellow Hyperion sweater off. He had a white shirt on underneath but left it, running his fingers through his hair instead.

“Is that a no?” Rhys hadn't been told to get out, so he sat down. Jack didn't look at him again.

“It's a 'none of your goddamn business.'”

“So you didn't find them,” Rhys said. “And now you're sulking.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jack said, but it was tired, without any heat. His hair was undone, strands falling in his face. He kicked off his boots and set his gun over them, grabbing a sleeping bag and stuffing himself into it roughly.

Rhys watched, eyebrow raised. “You can't kill every bandit we happen to run across.”

“Uh huh.” Jack yanked the bag up to his shoulders and settled into his pillows, facing away from Rhys. “If you wake me up I'll grab my gun on instinct, so I'd avoid that, cupcake. See you in the morning.”

Rhys frowned but didn't say anything, watching Jack for a long moment. He didn't speak to Rhys again. He could hear everyone else settling down in their own tents, zippers being closed and clothes shuffling through the thin covers.

He'd known he would have to share a tent with Jack, who wouldn't dare let Rhys out of his sight while he slept. It was weirdly intimate, to see Jack with his hair down, in a thin shirt, his signature coat and heavy boots left at the head of the tent. The tent was big enough to comfortably house five and Rhys' sleeping bag was all the way on the other end, much less plush and cushioned than Jack's and put on the bare tent floor as opposed to Jack's thick set of blankets and pillows. There wasn't any illusion of being equals even in the shared space.

Still. It was weird.

Rhys crawled over to his sleeping bag and quickly changed to a ratty t-shirt and pajama bottoms, folding his clothes carefully into his bag. He faced the wall of the tent, away from Jack.

He could hear his soft breathing. Jack was completely defenseless.

The gun was right there, though, closer to Jack than Rhys. Rhys resisted the impulse to get up and grab it.

Instead he rolled over and went to sleep, thinking of what terrain they might be exploring the next day and whether those bandits would show up again.


	5. Chapter 5

Road trips across endless swaths of land weren't as interesting as Rhys would have hoped.

They weren't totally empty; there was the occasional bandit camp that shot at them or cars that tailed their group until someone shot the tires out via Jack's command. And there were horrifying animals that bombed their cars, rakks and skags that didn't see the danger in attacking their vehicles.

Jack had said they were going to a mine because the animals were acting strange. Rhys tried to watch the ones that ran into their group to see how they might have acted normally, if there would be a way he could read the differences. Normally they seemed "violent" without much exception.

Rhys wasn't an animal person. He didn't understand this stuff.

He'd never seen a mine either, and as the days passed– measured by clock instead of the sun because Pandora’s day/night cycle was fucked to hell– he was more and more eager to know exactly how it worked. Jack had said it was a surface mine, a great quarry they'd built after finding traces of eridium in the ground. Rhys wasn't sure what to expect and tossed possibilities around in his head as he sat slumped in Jack's passenger seat.

It was the third day of driving, and in the middle of the quiet car Jack said, “There's something I want you to do when we get to the mine.”

Rhys looked up from playing with his hands. “Yeah?”

Jack's eyes were glued to the road but his hands flexed over the wheel. “When we get there, do what you did in the town. Look around and try to find anything that resonates with you. Sirens are connected to this eridium stuff somehow. If your powers are acting weird then it probably means we're on the right track. All right?”

His tone was clipped and firm but he spoke the last words with slow uncertainty, glancing at Rhys.

“How am I supposed to know what any of it means?” Rhys challenged.

“How the hell should I know? Just tell me if it does something weird. They're your powers, numb nuts, I'm just using 'em.”

“Yeah,” Rhys said, sighing and sinking back down into his seat. “I'm _very_ aware of that.”

“Oh– oh, don't do _that_ , cupcake, you're too cute to try and do the pity thing to me.”

Jack's sudden compliment made Rhys' eyes go wide but Jack barreled on, “Listen, I know you're not happy, but you're riding with Handsome Jack, yeah? You've gotta be at least a little happy about that. So suck it up, we've got a lot of work to do today and I don't need you sulking the whole time. This is something good we're doing, Rhysie. Try to live a little and come out of that protective bubble you've built for yourself.”

Rhys frowned but didn't say anything, staring out the window across the desert. He could bring up the map in his palm ECHO and see where they were going but he didn't have any coordinates to put on the map. The best he could do was guess.

He spread his palm flat in front of him and did just that, scanning over the lines of elevation and borders of rivers to see what path they might be taking, his little blip of a cursor moving slowly across the screen with the car.

“Oh, that's right, you don't have coords, do you?” Jack said, and reached over, pressing the fingers of one hand to the coordinate reading at the top of the map. Rhys made an indignant noise but Jack had his hand back on the wheel before he could say anything, pressing the gas to speed them up over the new flat lands stretching out in front of them.

Rhys looked at his map again and saw a new point on it, a bright glowing white diamond marking their destination. It rested over a dip in elevation, what Rhys could only assume was the mine itself set into the land. Their own moving point wasn't far from it, maybe a couple dozen miles. “Thanks,” he said cautiously, closing the map and resting his hand in his lap.

Jack grinned. “You're welcome, pumpkin.”

When they finally reached the mine Rhys hurried out to get a proper look at what it was, heart beating fast in anticipation. The mine was massive, easily the size of a lake, and much deeper. It was a surface mine, the ground dug out in a huge formation with trucks running back and forth carrying dirt and debris down the carved paths that curved around the edges of the quarry.

“For whatever reason the animals around here are being weird,” Jack said, stepping up beside him. “Lethargic, not vicious like they used to be. It's like they gave up on caring.” He glanced at Rhys. “Ready to take a look around?”

“As I'll ever be,” Rhys said, taking a deep breath. He started walking, feeling Jack take up the rear behind him. The rest of the team got out of their cars and started walking around, taking notes and scanning everything around the mine.

Rhys couldn't see any visible eridium himself. He'd heard the substance could enhance siren powers, something about a vague vault connection, but the rumors were few and far between. Yvette had done more research than Rhys and she didn't know much of anything about it.

He scuffled around the edges of the quarry. Jack tapped his gun with his thumb and glanced around, searching, so close to his heels that Rhys wanted to tell him to back off, but nothing could stop Jack from invading space like a nosy dog. Rhys grit his teeth and kept walking. 

“We dig up a lot of gold here,” Jack purred, peering down into the mine. “You ever seen something so glorious? Used to be a town of bandits here but we chased them out.”

“That's a– town?” Rhys asked, nearly tripping over a rock as he whirled to look at Jack.

Jack snorted. “Yeah, full of no good idiots who wouldn't stop shooting long enough to hear my offer. I told them Hyperion would make this place better, even offered jobs to some of the smarter ones, but no one cared. So I ran 'em out.”

Rhys' eyes were wide and he avoided looking at Jack, one hand curled into a tight fist at his side. “Did they start attacking you?”

“Only when they found out who I was.” Jack laughed, loud and rolling; it echoed over the quarry. “You'd think all the posters and billboards I put up would have tipped them off!”

Something hot and uncomfortable coiled in Rhys' gut. He started walking faster, boots scraping across the graveled rock. If Jack noticed, he didn't say anything, just matched Rhys' pace and kept laughing to himself.

The rocks crunched under Rhys' boots and he watched where he walked, wary of tripping over some misplaced equipment. He hadn't even seen any animals yet, peering around for the telltale shapes of the skags and rakks.

He spotted some eventually, hanging out on the other side of the quarry on the upper rock ledges. Skags. They were lazing around on the rocks, not moving much besides occasionally lifting their heads to look at all the humans suddenly in their territory.

“Yeah, those bastards,” Jack said with a sigh. “We've tried getting rid of them but they just keep showing back up. We have to shoot the damn things every other week or so, scares the rest of them off.” He put a hand to his hip, reaching for his gun.

“Wait! Wait, wait a goddamn second,” Rhys said, jerking forward to stop him. “We came here to look at _them_ specifically! Let me get over there at least.”

Jack sneered but stopped, waiting.

Rhys started walking again. The skags stayed on their rock, looking down at them from time to time. Their teeth were large, threatening, and their claws looked like they could rip Rhys' throat out. Rhys approached slowly, Jack behind him, and stopped a fair distance from the rock.

There was . . . something that felt right, about looking at them. Not right, because they obviously weren't well. The skags that had attacked on the road were fast, spewing slag and crashing into their cars like running boulders. The ones on the rocks were . . . not that.

“Rhys,” Jack warned. “If you're gonna die out here, I want it to be under my goddamn gun, not because some monster ripped you in half. Don't get closer.”

“No, there's something wrong.” Rhys moved forward slowly, hands spread wide, his body angled low, looking up at the skags.

One of them startled and jumped off the rock, careening down towards him. Rhys yelped. Jack swore, pulling out his gun. Rhys tumbled back and the skag was almost on him, ready to tear his throat out–

But it didn't.

Jack shot and missed and in that time the skag stopped in front of Rhys, leaning close but not attacking. Rhys' heart was pounding but he said, “Wait, hang on–” his eyes trained on the skag, its sinewy muscles and elongated face, sharp claws digging into the earth beneath it.

“Rhys, get the hell away from that thing!”

“It's not attacking me!” he said, stern but not raising his voice, still watching the skag. It was hesitating, and the skags up on the rocks were watching attentively, all eyes on Rhys, who didn't dare move. The skag in front of him circled slowly. It opened its strange mouth, fleshy insides dripping with saliva. It moved slow, lumbering, and when it was in front of Rhys again it bent down slowly, investigating.

Rhys' instinct got the better of him and he leaned up with a hand out, touching the top of the skag's head. If he were smarter he would have used his metal hand, at the risk of having it bitten off, but when his skin touched the rough head he was glad he did, filled with fascination as he brushed his fingers over the head, around the spikes that looked as sharp as razors.

“What the hell–” Jack said.

Rhys laid his palm flat on the skag's head and his arm flared, tattoos lighting beneath his shirt. He breathed in sharply, back bowing. A surge of electric fire jolted up his arm, down his left side, burning over skin and muscle and bone. He could see everything in the skag's eyes, the rough rocks of Pandora, the scarcity of the food, the mining machines that rumbled and echoed through their home, running over baby skags and crushing the adults under their wheels. Eridium shone in the mind's eye of the creature, the piles of rubbles that held bits and pieces of the precious resource. Something rose up underneath Rhys like rolling storm clouds at the thought of it, bright and glowing, and his memory brought up the vault symbol, powerful, etched into the wall, its edges glowing bright and purple like lightning from heaven sent down to burn itself into Rhys' eyes.

He yanked his hand away and breathed hard. The skag was still looking down at him, head cocked curiously. For a moment they stared at each other. It turned fast, running back up the rocks and settling among the other skags. Rhys put a hand to his chest, holding it tight, tattoos burning over his wrist through the cover-up.

“What in the ever loving hell was _that_ ,” Jack said, kneeling beside Rhys. He grabbed his arm and yanked him back up to his feet, holding Rhys' shoulder while his legs shook. “Like, really. What the hell. That thing could have killed you. You're lucky I didn't shoot the damn thing and catch your head by accident.”

“It was upset,” Rhys said, eyes still fixed on the skags above the rocks. “They're all upset, I think.”

Jack's brow furrowed and he followed Rhys' gaze to the skags. “How would you know? They're animals.”

“They don't like the mining,” Rhys said. “And there's . . . something about the eridium that they don't like. I don’t think they like seeing it around here. They know it draws people here.”

Jack turned back to Rhys and stared for a long moment. “You got all that from just touching its frickin head?”

Rhys flexed his hand, the lingering burn of the tattoos still running under his skin. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “It told me a lot, actually. Did you ever bother to think about how this mine could disturb the wildlife in the area?”

“No,” Jack said with a derisive snort.

“Well maybe you should.” Rhys looked down at the mine again. It was nothing more than an empty crater. It took years of work to find eridium, without a care about how Pandorans or the animals would feel about it, mindlessly carving the land for the sake of money.

Rhys had known it was going on when he'd worked at Helios. Why was it making him so uncomfortable _now?_

He shook the feeling off and started walking around the edge of the mine again, not minding the skags above them. Jack glared at them but kept Rhys' pace. “Did you actually notice anything about the vault, cupcake? That's kinda what we're looking for.”

“Not really,” Rhys said, and that was true. The vault symbol wasn't new. He just hadn't expected a skag of all things to communicate its significance to him. He hadn't thought a skag was even capable of the necessary thought processes. Rhys pursed his lips, the image of the vault symbol coming to mind again and again.

There was nothing else at the mine. A few people on the exploration team scanned a few places where there was likely to be more eridium, and Jack talked to the local project director on his comm to tell them where to dig. But Rhys didn't feel anything new and there was nothing interesting to look at. It was all . . . nothing. And his tattoos were still faintly pulsing, like he _should_ know where to go, but Rhys couldn't for the life of him tell where that was or why.

“You sure you didn't find anything good, pumpkin?” Jack asked, walking back to him. Across the quarry, some of the team members were sticking up the poles for their tents. They'd set the camp next to the mine for the night, though the Pandoran sun hadn’t set yet. They would be far enough not to be bothered by any construction; Rhys could already see a night crew piling into their vehicles, already starting with Jack's suggestions.

“Nothing,” Rhys said, sighing. “Listen, Jack, I'm not sure aimlessly wandering Pandora with only vague hints about a vault is going to do anything.”

“But it's better than sitting on our asses,” Jack said. “Come on.” He waved a hand and started walking toward camp. “Let's get the hell out of here, see if anything useful comes up in the morning.”

Rhys pursed his lips but followed, working his fingers on his hand to disperse the remaining warmth that coursed through him. There was . . . too much. Too much of something he couldn't name, something like suspicion or frustration. He wanted to pace in circles or maybe go back to the skags, something other than following Jack around like a puppy on a leash.

They had dinner at camp. Jack talked quietly with a few people while Rhys watched. He didn't hear anything that made much sense to him, not knowing Pandora's landscape or any of the Hyperion sites Jack was talking about. There were bits he could pick up, pieces he knew from hacking the system to steal information, but it was all related to the vaults and those were something Rhys had never tried to touch, thinking the vaults were a myth or a waste of time. He, Vaughn, Yvette, they'd all been in it for the money, not for some fabled glory that only Handsome Jack could attest to.

The restlessness didn't go away. Rhys growled and got up from his seat by the tent, pacing around the camp. He walked to the edge of the camp, peering around the endless stretch of land only pierced by rock cuts and technological ruin.

“I'm going for a walk,” Rhys said, just loud enough for someone to hear him, but not nearly loud enough to catch Jack's ears. Jack didn't even turn from his conversation, talking to a weaselly looking man who was scribbling on a notepad.

Rhys walked out of camp, going slow to keep people from looking at him, faster as he got farther away.

It was a lot more quiet without the bustle of Hyperion employees. Rhys didn't walk far, staying within shouting range in case bandits or skags jumped out of the rocks. The stars were starting to come out and he watched them for a moment, trying to see any patterns he might have recognized from looking at the infinite, stretching space on Helios.

A loud scuffle came from the left. Rhys didn't have time to shout. A hand clamped over his mouth and an arm curled around his neck, dragging him back toward a small pile of boulders. He tried to scream and kick but whoever had a hold on him was too strong, holding his mouth firmly shut.

A second later the hand was gone, replaced with thick tape, and he was knocked to the ground. Rhys grunted and his eyes darted around frantically, looking for his assailant.

When he saw them his brow furrowed. 

A woman. No, two women. The women he'd seen at the bar back in the first small town. They were each grimacing down at him, and one– the one with dreadlocks, he'd already forgotten their names– kicked some dirt at him. Rhys grunted in protest and scrambled up, but a second later a thick, heeled boot was on his chest.

“Well, well, look who we caught,” said the one with the fancy hat. Fiona, that was her. Rhys growled and reached up to remove her leg from his chest.

The other one– Sasha!– was on him in a second, pinning both arms down. “Aw, don't be like that,” she purred. “We ditched one hell of a deal to follow you all the way out here. Just make it worth our while.”

Rhys breathed a heavy sigh out of his nose, glaring up at them both.

“We saw what you did with that skag earlier,” Fiona said, reaching into her belt. She pulled out a pistol, pointing it directly at Rhys. “So. What the hell was that?”

Rhys gave her as much of a pointed look as he could manage with his mouth taped shut.

“Yeah, I don't think this is working how you wanted it to, Fi,” Sasha said, giggling quietly.

“Oh, shut it,” Fiona hissed. She bent down and roughly ripped the tape off Rhys' face.

“Ouch, fuck! Ouch, ouch ouch, what the hell?!”

Sasha slapped her hand over his mouth again. “Do you wanna get the whole damn camp over here? Jesus, it was bad enough before. Just shut up for a second, we're not gonna kill you!”

Fiona tilted her gun back and forth, considering. “We didn't say we wouldn't, exactly.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “We're going to refrain from that if possible. So. You.” She looked down at Rhys again. “What did you do to make those skags so docile? Are you Hyperion creeps poisoning the planet or something?”

She lifted her hand slowly, eyes narrowed. Rhys took a few deep breaths and said, “We didn't _do_ anything. They were already lethargic.”

“Bullshit,” Fiona spat, holding her gun tighter. “That thing ran right for you and stopped. What'd you do to it?”

“Nothing!” Rhys said. “How'd you see this anyway? Were you . . . spying on us?”

“Oh, good, he has _some_ brains,” Sasha said, her tone dripping in sarcasm.

"There's good money for Hyperion people with brains. I bet someone would die to get their hands one someone like this, huh?" Fiona tilted her head and her gun in one motion, like weighing a scale. 

Rhys glared at her again. “Handsome Jack is going to kill you if he finds out you've been spying on us. I'd get the hell out of here if I were you.”

“I dunno, he already missed us once.” Fiona cocked her hip and smiled. “If he plans on using that shitty Hyperion SMG again, I think we'll be fine.”

Rhys struggled to understand, until it clicked in his head. “You!” he said. “You were the ones we heard the other night!”

“Brilliant.” Fiona rolled her eyes. “I can see why you said he was cute, because he damn sure doesn't have anything else appealing about him.”

“I'm starting to think these insults are supposed to be personal,” Rhys said, deadpan. They both snickered at him.

Sasha's hands were still tight over his own and she leaned upside down over him to look down at his face. “Why wouldn't it be personal when all you Hyperion scum do is come down here to ruin the planet? And now we find out you're torturing the local animals. We have to do something about that, don't we?”

“Like murdering Handsome Jack's new pet.” Fiona put her finger on the trigger, steadying the pistol.

Rhys jumped. “Holy shit! No, no way, I said we _weren't_ hurting the skags! Come on, they're ugly animals anyway! Don't shoot me, fuck!”

“Put that damn gun down.”

They all froze.

Jack was standing behind them. A few members of his team were with him, guns up. Jack had his own aimed straight at Fiona's head. “Wow, even I'm not stupid enough to interrogate the prisoner within hearing range of the people protecting him. That's just– that's just a huge rookie mistake, right there.”

Sasha hissed and Fiona swore under her breath, both lifting their hands up and backing quickly away from Rhys. He scrambled up and ran to Jack.

Fiona tried to lower her hand, aiming at Jack. A warning shot fired next to her left foot. She swore again, backing up another step and letting her gun drop into the dirt. 

“Seriously.” Jack laughed and waved his gun, shaking his head. “I can't believe you thought this was a good idea. I'm gonna enjoy shooting you two down.”

Their eyes went wide. Jack lifted his gun and aimed it at Fiona again, his finger going to the trigger.

Regret filled his chest like an electric shock and Rhys darted in front of Jack's gun, praying he was fast enough. “Wait!” He put up his hands. “Don't shoot, don't shoot!”

Jack snarled and backed up a step, almost dropping his gun. “Holy fuck, kid, don't do that! I nearly blasted your brains out!”

“Don't kill them,” Rhys begged. “They're just concerned about Pandora, Jack. They don't mean any harm.”

Jack raised a brow. “Uh, cupcake? They were aiming a gun at your goddamn head.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Rhys glanced back at them, struggling to come up with a good excuse. He could only think of August, the man who'd threatened him, how he hadn't stopped to question whether Sasha was in the wrong before protecting her. And these two were sisters, family.

Rhys hadn't come here to get anyone killed.

“They're just trying to protect Pandora,” he said, leveling Jack with a firm look. “They're worried that we're messing with the wildlife and gonna wreck their town, and I don't really blame them. Everyone here seems to think Hyperion is a huge fucking disaster.”

Jack's lips lifted in a sneer. Rhys quickly added, “I'm not saying that that's true, that's just how the locals think. I can't really blame them for not liking us when they have a huge bias. I don't want to shoot anyone, Jack. Please. Just put the gun down.”

Looking between them, Jack's eyes settled on Sasha. Still holding his gun up, he said, “How much do you know about this planet? Can you navigate yourself around?”

Sasha glanced at her sister. “Ah, yeah, probably? We have a car.”

“That is _not_ what I asked, but all right. What the hell do either of you know about vaults?”

They both stared for a long moment, mouths agape. “We know the local legends,” Sasha said slowly, as if feeling the words out for the first time. “Stuff people say about finding vaults, rumors about where they are. No one knows how to get to them without a key so they're all pretty useless.”

Jack grinned. “Good enough for me. You two are coming with us.”

“What!” Fiona stepped forward. “Oh, hell no, we are not helping someone like–”

“Fi!” Sasha hissed, grabbing her shoulder.

“Or I could still shoot you,” Jack offered, shrugging. “Your choice, really. I don't give a damn either way.”

“We'll help,” Sasha said, before Fiona could butt in again. Fiona fought her grip but Jack cocked his gun again, pointing it at her head, and she stopped. Sasha kept a tight hold on her. “We can follow your group in our caravan, tell you about the places people usually go to ask about vault stuff.”

“That's more like it.” Jack spun the pistol over his hand and slid it back into his belt. Rhys breathed out, relieved. “Bring 'em to camp, keep an eye on them,” Jack said, snapping his fingers. Four people automatically grabbed them, ignoring their protests and bodily dragging them back to the camp.

Jack stepped up to Rhys, eyes narrowed. “You're lucky they know something useful. Why the hell didn't you want them shot to ground?”

“I . . .” Rhys watched the girls being dragged away, ropes already tied around their wrists to keep them pulling any weapons out. “I don't really want to kill people if we can avoid it, Jack.”

Jack snorted, shaking his head. “Wow. You sound way too much like me when I started out. ‘Only shoot the people that hurt ya,’” he said mockingly. “Except they _were_ trying to hurt ya, cupcake.” He tilted his head, curious. “Keeping skags alive, asking me not to shoot people . . . I bet you wouldn't even hurt a rakk if it divebombed you.”

“That's– not necessarily true,” Rhys said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Jack laughed and patted him on the back. “Relax, kid. Just marveling at how harmless you are, living on Helios like you did. Most people at least learn how to give out a bullet or two, even if it's just in that stupid fingergun game.”

A blush creeped up Rhys' neck and he ducked his head.

“Also.” Jack snapped his fingers until Rhys met his eyes again, Jack’s own staring hard down at him. “Don't leave camp without supervision again. Next time I'm not gonna hesitate to shoot whoever's got a hold of you. We're not losing you on this trip, kid.”

Rhys swallowed. “Yeah. Okay.”

Jack nodded, satisfied, and turned on his heel to walk back to camp. Rhys hesitated for a moment and ducked closer to the rocks where Fiona and Sasha had been hiding, activating his ECHOeye. Yvette and Vaughn deserved to hear about this.

They weren't happy about it. Vaughn panicked about native Pandorans and Yvette grilled him about everything he knew about the sisters. Rhys did his best; the fact that he knew barely anything about them didn't help. Yvette sighed and said, “Don't spend too much time around them. Keep your senses up and watch out for anything they might try to pull.”

Rhys nodded. Vaughn's voice came over the comm, “And for gods' sake, don't hit on them!”

He laughed. “I wasn't planning to. If I haven't hit on a man who's got 'handsome' literally in his name, who else would I hit on?”

Vaughn grunted but accepted the answer and they both hung up with a quick goodbye. Rhys closed his ECHO network and stood for a long moment, staring into the middle distance and wondering when his life had become this complicated.


	6. Chapter 6

At camp, Fiona and Sasha were tied together and planted squarely next to the cooking appliances while their camp cook made everyone dinner. They were bickering quietly with each other, Fiona kicking at the dirt impatiently every time her whispers got loud, the words roiling with anger. When Rhys walked by them they both gave him a death glare and he held a hand up to cover his view, speeding past. 

They ate dinner and went to bed. Sasha and Fiona were given a tent to share with one of the guardswomen, who cocked her gun happily as they both crawled into her tent, hands still tied behind their backs.

In the morning– about six hours of rest while the sun burned through their tents– they started driving again. Jack pulled up his ECHOcomm, hand resting on the piece by his ear. “So,” he said, “got any news for us from the darling additions to our team?”

Already he was asking Sasha and Fiona for information. Rhys shouldn’t have been surprised. He sat up, listening intently as Jack hummed and nodded at the words scratching out of the comm. “Train station, huh?” he said, grinning. “I think we can do that. Tell them to give you the coords and I’ll plug them into the map. Right.” He hung up, and a minute later brought a map up on the dashboard of the car, plugging numbers into it. Rhys glanced over curiously. The train station wasn’t exactly close but it looked like it was in the same rough, rocky region they were currently driving through.

“Stop, stop,” Jack said, waving a hand to keep Rhys from hovering over his map. “We’ll get there when we get there, princess.”

Rhys slumped in his seat and watched the scenery go by. Everywhere they went that didn't yield pay dirt sent Jack's impatience ratcheting up, and it was only a matter of time before he started taking his anger out on the team; Rhys especially.

If they didn't find something, he was screwed, but if they found something, he was screwed, too.

The train station was surrounded by old equipment and machinery, populated only by metal and trash. Jack claimed to have shot the bandits out of it a long time ago. “Popped 'em all,” he said, stepping out of his car and grinning. “It was easy, like shooting fish in a goddamn barrel. They all run straight at ya, like you haven't got a frickin' machine gun in your hands.”

“Sounds foolish,” Rhys agreed mildly, glancing around. Fiona and Sasha were being held at gunpoint, wrists untied but very clearly threatened by the woman assigned to watch them. Their belts were already empty of any guns.

“What are we trying to find here?” Rhys asked, kicking a stone. There were only a few remnants of life, shreds of cloth and papers that blew whenever a breeze picked up.

“Same as always, Rhysie,” Jack said, walking fast down the platform. “Anything that makes your powers tick up. We're gonna find that vault one way or another.”

Rhys wrinkled his nose. The empty promises rang hollow and he was starting to wonder if there was even a vault to be found. Maybe they'd gotten to all of the ones on Pandora already and they were all wasting their time.

The way Rhys' tattoos had glowed when touching the vault symbol said otherwise. Rhys ignored that thought, walking down the length of the station.

He only had a few minutes' peace when Sasha and Fiona cornered him. A hand landed hard on his shoulder and Rhys nearly jumped out of his skin, yelping and turning around. Fiona raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him and Sasha shook her head, disbelieving. “Relax,” Fiona said. “They took our weapons. Even if I wanted to shoot you, I couldn't.”

“Oh, uh. Thanks, I guess.” Rhys relaxed and looked over their shoulders. A woman with a gun was staring at them, ready to fire the second they crossed any lines. “You're under pretty strict watch.”

“No thanks to you,” Sasha hissed. “Thanks for getting us caught, by the way. This is absolutely how I pictured spending my time away from the bar.”

“Hey.” Rhys lifted his hands innocently, starting to walk again. Sasha and Fiona followed as he said, “It wasn't my fault you two tried to _kill_ me.”

Fiona blew out a long breath. “As if we actually would.”

“Wait, what?” Rhys skidded to a stop and stared at them. “You _weren't_ going to kill me? With a gun pointed at my face?”

“We don't have to explain ourselves to Hyperion scum.” Sasha brushed past him, her nose in the air. “Come on, Fi, we gotta find a way to get these goons off our backs.”

Fiona hesitated, looking at Rhys. “I got one more question.”

“Oh, so _you're_ allowed to ask,” Rhys said, rolling his eyes.

Fiona ignored him. “What the hell is someone as useless as you doing with Handsome Jack? Why the hell would he bring you? Are you some kind of tech wizard or something?”

“Sorry, I don't talk to people who threaten to murder me and my companions on sight,” Rhys bit out, walking away again. Fiona made an indignant noise behind him but he just walked faster, keeping his head down. He didn't trust them even without any guns. 

There were boxes lying around the station that didn't hold much besides trash, sometimes extra bullets. Rhys bent down and flipped a box over, not expecting much.

Instead there was something inside it, glowing and purple. Rhys' eyebrows lifted and he tilted the box, the object inside rattling across the bottom. It was rectangular, solid, the eerie glow tinting the inside of the box.

Rhys had heard of eridium and even seen some e-tech weapons, but he'd never come across a chunk of it himself. He grabbed it, dropping the box and standing. The glow reflected dully off his metal hand, purple mixing oddly with the yellow casing to make it look orange. Rhys frowned and switched hands, wondering what the texture felt like.

Heat surged up his arm. Rhys' muscles locked and he gasped sharply. His entire arm was on fire, tattoos glowing like neon signs, flames of pain licking up the skin and down Rhys' entire left side. His back scalded, like someone had poured burning oil down his skin and it was cooking him from the inside out. His mouth was dry and Rhys screamed, the sound twisting like an angry snake out of his throat.

He almost blacked out but managed to hang onto his consciousness, collapsing to his hands and knees. His body jerked, twitching and twisting, and it felt like someone had taken a knife and carved deep caverns into his skin where his shoulder blades met his ribs. He let out a choked sob, the pain throbbing down his back and over the left half of his skin, scraping like hungry teeth. 

There were bodies around him, panicked tones and yelling. The words roared like thunder in Rhys' ears and he couldn't pick out anything. Instead he let his face fall and press against the cool stone of the abandoned train station, groaning at the slight relief. It only lasted a second, the fire flooding every cool part of his skin and lighting him up like a storm. He wasn't sure, but Rhys thought this might be was it felt like to be struck by lightning.

Rough hands gripped the tops of his arms and hauled him up. Rhys cried out and tried to wriggle free but the hands held him tight and spun him around. Jack grinned wildly up at him.

“Hey, there, cupcake,” he said, teeth flashing. “I haven't seen those in a while.”

Rhys' brow furrowed and he was about to ask what the hell Jack meant. Pain twisted in his back and Rhys twinged, looking over his shoulder.

Fiona and Sasha were next to him, staring, and Sasha had tried to reach out, her hand hovering near his back. Rhys’ wings were out, his siren powers manifested. They turned away from Sasha's hand to press close to his back. Rhys wiggled again until Jack put him down and he took a step away from the crowd; even Jack's team had gathered to watch the show. Rhys did his best to tuck his wings away but he had no idea how to really control them and every movement made the pain flare, electricity shooting through his spine and dragging across his muscles with little jolts.

“What the hell did you do?” Jack asked, laughing, hands on his hips. “You told me you couldn't summon those when you wanted, Rhysie.”

“I– I can't,” he said, swallowing around the thick lump in his throat. “I found eridium, t-touched it, I . . .”

“Ah, that'll get ya.” Jack glanced around until he spotted the overturned, empty box, kicking the cardboard aside. “No idea where bandits get a hold of this stuff but some of it gets left lying around. It looks like we finally found out how to unlock your powers, though.” He gave Rhys another cheeky grin. “What do you say we put those to use?”

Rhys trembled and didn't answer. He looked at the girls; they were both wide eyed and Sasha's mouth was hanging open, staring at his wings.

He looked at Jack again. “I don't know how to use them, I've told you.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Jack sidled up to him, so close Rhys could feel his breath as he put a hand on Rhys' shoulder, unaffected by the shocks of electricity jumping from the edges of his bright wings. “You never learn how if you don't start _trying_ , pumpkin.”

Everyone was staring and the fires of his powers kept thrumming across Rhys' skin, flickering over the edges of the tattoos to map them out in a sea of shock and pain.

There was a trickle of something, though, at the edges of his mind. As he breathed in and felt the blasts of electric power run over his skin, he could feel a pinprick, like pushing the tip of a knife into the back of his head, and he closed his eyes to focus on it. He thought of the vault symbol and how it had sent a surge of power through him, electricity coiled around his arm and his throat and petting the skin like an old lover. The skag had lunged at him and then stopped and it had been like Pandora itself washed over his fingertips when he touched it. Things were speaking to him, calling out. Jack was right; he hadn't tried to go near the feeling, hadn't _wanted_ to, but as soon as he closed his eyes and let it fill him up, choke him out, he could tell where it was coming from.

His wings pulsed, bolts of lightning skittering across his body. Rhys shivered and bit his lip, looking for the source of it, why his wings shielded him, where the threat, the calling, was coming from. He wanted to breathe but every inhale felt like a thunder storm, icy at the edges and freezing his throat, pushing at his insides and making him tremble.

There was a source. He could see it, and Rhys struggled to open his eyes and look at Jack.

“South,” he said. “South, I– I felt cold, I'm not sure . . .”

“There's ice plains in the south,” Jack said, grinning. “You saw something there, Rhysie?”

“Felt something,” Rhys said, bringing both hands up and rubbing down his biceps, working off the lingering pain that still sparked in him. His wings drifted back and forth behind him, unable or unwilling to stay still. “I couldn't tell what it was, I just–”

Jack clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. “This is way better than what we had, cupcake. That's settled, we'll go to the ice plains and find that goddamn vault, finally.”

“Don't you need a key?” Fiona asked, crossing her arms. Sasha elbowed her in the side.

Jack raised a brow at them, as if they weren't interesting enough to have caught his attention. “You let me worry about that and focus on being useful enough not to get your heads blown off. Do you know the best way to get to the ice plains from here?”

“Uh . . .” Sasha tilted her head, thinking. “There are some roads that bandits settle on and a few paths abandoned due to bullymong infestations, I think.”

“We don't leave home often enough to know for sure– ow!” Fiona flinched when Sasha elbowed her again, rubbing her sore side.

“There's definitely roads,” Sasha confirmed. “And you can tell which ways are the most used, there's more bandits on them trying to steal from people that drive through.”

“Ah, those damn things.” Jack nodded along, looking at Rhys again, eyes wandering over his wings. “Well we can take care of them no problem, and then we'll find the vault. As long as Rhys here keeps using those pretty wings of his, right, pumpkin?”

Rhys swallowed and ducked his head. “Yeah. Can I . . . get rid of these now?”

Jack stared for a long moment, mouth twisting unpleasantly. He sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, whatever. We have what we need. Don't forget how to do that, cupcake, I want to be able to tell what the fuck we're doing when we get to the ice plains.”

Rhys took a deep breath and let it out. The pain faded and his felt the fire on his shoulder blades lessen, blinking away in the next few moments. A wave of exhaustion hit him and he nearly fell, knees buckling, but something wrapped around his side and caught him, grunting loudly in his ear.

Fiona was holding him up. Rhys struggled to stand and leaned on Fiona when she let him, propping him up against the nearest wall. “Geez, for someone so skinny you sure weigh a lot,” she griped, holding on to his shoulders to keep him steady. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just– need a minute.” Rhys closed his eyes and breathed again, focusing on Fiona's hands wrapped tight around his shoulders, the nice pressure there. “Wait.” He opened his eyes again and saw them both standing in front of him. A guard was watching them all not too far away, his gun up and ready if one of them tried to make a break for it.

Rhys blinked slowly at them. “What are you doing?”

Fiona leaned back. “Um, helping you?”

“Yeah, but.” Rhys breathed out hard, blinking a few more times to clear his vision. Things were still blurry and the remnants of pain in his left side made everything hard to think through. The crowd had dispersed, hovering around Jack as he barked new orders at them that Rhys couldn't parse at that moment. When he felt like he could speak without getting dizzy, he said, “Why are you helping me?”

“Because you're going to faint and we didn't want you braining yourself on the sidewalk,” Sasha said helpfully.

“No!” Rhys shook his head, breathing in fast. “I mean– I thought you hated me. Hyperion scum and all that.”

Fiona and Sasha exchanged a meaningful look, and Fiona met his eyes, smiling gently. “Yeah, we do. But, Rhys, what just happened there, it was . . . it wasn't okay.”

“Jack took you here because of those weird powers, right? To find a vault?”

Rhys looked at his shoulder even though the wings had vanished, and back to the two women who were staring like they knew exactly what his answer would be. “It's a long story,” he said instead.

Sasha rolled her eyes and Fiona gave him another gentle smile, as though he were a child. Rhys frowned and shook her hands off of him, pushing off the wall. The world spun for a minute and he put his hands out to catch himself. Fiona hovered but he was steady, brushing himself off and straightening out his clothes. They hadn't been hurt by his wings– it seemed all the damage done by them was superficial– but they'd been wrinkled beyond relief and there were no irons on Pandora. He frowned and tried fitfully to straighten his shirt, to no avail.

“So we're going to the ice plains,” Sasha said, stepping near Fiona as Rhys started to walk away. They kept pace with him easily despite his long legs and Rhys tried not-so-covertly to walk a bit faster, keeping his head down.

Fiona answered loudly, “Yeah, but I haven't been around any before. I'm not sure what kind of area is south of us.”

“Me neither, but we can always tell when we meet the locals.”

“Why are you so suddenly casual?” Rhys snapped, looking over his shoulder. “A few minutes ago you wanted to kill me for getting you stuck here!”

Neither of them responded to his huffing and puffing. Instead Sasha took a few quick steps and patted his upper arm affectionately. “Like we said. We know a victim when we see one. Come on, Fi, we're going to miss the car pile up and get one of the gross dudes following our caravan.”

Fiona's eyes went wide at that and she hurried to catch up with Sasha, both of them leaving Rhys in the dust to join the rest of Jack's team. They were all getting in the cars, preparing to leave, while Jack himself wandered around the train station for a few more minutes, peeking into old dumpsters and kicking over shabby boxes like they might contain hidden Pandoran secrets.

A victim. The word strung through Rhys, like someone was digging a wire right into the skin above his heart. His fingers clenched and he had to force himself to walk forward and get into Jack's car again, ignoring Jack’s pleased smile as he climbed into the driver’s side and started driving south.

 

* * *

 

The ice plains were . . . icy. Rhys wasn't sure what he'd expected.

They were also freezing and full of furry monsters from hell that wanted nothing more than to eat them all until there were no humans left to drive around in their territory.

Bullymongs were bigger than Rhys had ever imagined, and they tossed rocks at their cars. More than once Jack engaged a set of pistols installed in the hood of the car to shoot at them, and opened to window to aim an SMG when that failed. Rhys didn't want to be eaten alive, certainly, but he flinched every time one of the animals went down and Jack laughed his way through the kills.

He called the guard with Sasha and Fiona, asking for directions through the worst parts of the plains. From the way his lips went tight, Rhys could guess that Sasha wasn’t being the most helpful, but Jack took his anger out on the animals assaulting their cars and always smiled after he’d managed a shot through one of their heads.

Eventually he asked, “Where to, Rhysie boy?” and Rhys had to blink and think through it before he realized what Jack was asking.

“I'm not sure,” he said, remembering the vibrations of life through his limbs, how he'd choked on the breaths of air, the vault symbol like a lure–

He shook his head roughly. “I didn't get coordinates or anything,” he went on, avoiding Jack's stare. “It felt cold. And empty. That's all I can really say.”

“Well, there's plenty of places like that on Pandora.” Jack took a sharp turn to the left, steering them closer to the mountains. “But I know one place like that that's worse than anything else around here. Sit tight, cupcake, we're going for a ride.”

Rhys didn't register the command at first, until Jack took another sharp turn and nearly crashed into a rock cut. Rhys yelped and clung to the armrests, shrinking in his chair. Jack was going off road, _way_ off road, and the sudden bumps were enough to send Rhys' skull colliding with the roof of the car. Jack just laughed, hands tight on the wheel, shoulders drawn up as he held the wheel tight.

The mountains got sharper and taller, and the cliffs that edged below them were steeper, threatening death every time Jack drove near them. The ice and snow got heavier, too, obscuring any bandit camps and covering the road so well that they wouldn't have been able to find it even if Jack was still interested in using it. Rhys tucked into himself, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around his knees.

When they stopped they were on the edge of a gorge that ran deep into the earth, an elongated crater made of jagged rocks and ice that would stab and kill anyone unfortunate enough to fall in long before they hit the bottom. Jack got out so fast that Rhys thought he might slip and plummet to his death, but he wasn’t that lucky. Jack stood at the edge, peering down, lips tipped up in an unsettling grin.

“How's this, cupcake?” he asked, looking at Rhys over his shoulder.

Rhys got out slowly, clinging to the car. The expedition team was pulling up behind them and the first thing Rhys heard was Sasha yelling at someone not to be grabby, but his eyes were fixed on Jack and the canyon below. It was certainly cold and empty, all right, but that alone wasn't helping him very much.

“I don't know,” he said slowly, inching closer, staying by the car. “Jack, there's really nothing definite telling me about anything. It's all . . . vague. Feelings and intuition. I can't just turn my powers on and magically know.”

Jack's eyes narrowed and he moved away from the edge. Rhys shifted away as Jack moved close again. “Really?” he said, looking at Rhys in that way that made him feel smaller despite Jack being a good few inches shorter than him. “Because you seemed to do just fine with that at the old train station.”

“I–” Rhys' eyes darted away. Everyone on the team was gathering around them now, some looking curiously at the canyon, some staring at the two of them. “I had eridium,” Rhys said, forcing himself to stand taller. “It triggered my powers, that wasn't my fault.”

“Is that all you need, then?” Jack rolled his eyes. “Aleckson, get over here, gimme the case we packed.”

“Wha–” Rhys spun around and saw a man digging something out of one of the vans, hefting a heavy metal briefcase out of it. It was the freckled scientist Rhys had seen Jack talking to from time to time. He limped as he carried case over, handing it off to Jack with a relieved exhale.

“Thanks,” Jack said, his tone clipped, and spun the locks on the briefcase, flipping it open.

Inside were bars of purified eridium, glowing neon purple and lighting up Jack's face with the color, tinging the whites of his eyes and the creases of his mask.

“Whoa!” Behind them Fiona and Sasha both gasped. Rhys glanced at them but quickly looked back at Jack, swallowing thickly.

“You think I don't know how sirens work?” Jack said, teeth gleaming, tinted eerily purple. “Eridium is like drugs to them, I've been around long enough to know that much. If it helped before, it'll help now. Take some and tell me whether the damn vault is here or not.”

Rhys backed away but there was someone behind him immediately, a gun digging into his shoulder. A tall, dark, muscular woman lifted her lips in a sharp sneer, eyes narrowed. Rhys held his hands up, defenseless, trembling.

“How the hell is that fair?” Sasha said, glaring at Jack. “You can't make him use eridium! That crap is half the reason you Hyperion jerks wrecked our planet!

Jack side-eyed Sasha and laughed. “Oh, you're both feisty ones, aren't you? But it doesn't fucking matter. Shut up or I shoot you both in the head.”

Sasha gaped and Fiona quickly grabbed her arm, pulling her back. Jack looked at Rhys again, expectant. “Well? Are you going to take some or not?”

“Can't we . . .” Rhys struggled to think of an excuse.

“Actually, sir?”

All their heads turned to look at the man who'd brought Jack the briefcase. He adjusted his glasses and said, voice shaking, “I think it best if we settle in for the night. If we try to search for a vault now, it'll be too dark, and we don't want to risk injury near the canyon. It's safer to wait until there's ample daylight.”

Jack's eyes narrowed, staring the man down. Aleckson stiffened and backed up a few steps, putting as much distance between him and Jack as possible without actually running.

The briefcase slammed shut. Jack hefted it to Aleckson, who barely caught it, stumbling forward. “Fine,” Jack said, resigned. “We'll set up camp for the night, deal with this in the morning.” He gave Rhys a meaningful look and walked past him to his car.

Rhys relaxed, breathing out hard. The team left him, busying themselves with setting up camp on a flat spot not too far from the edge of the canyon. Fiona and Sasha lingered, watching him.

He looked up and frowned. “What? You wanna see more of a show? Because without the eridium I'm not going to transform again.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Fiona said, less biting than Rhys expected. She moved close, eyeing the tattoos on his neck and tracing down his arm, as if she could see everything despite the fact that he was still wearing long sleeves. “I've never met a siren before.”

“I thought sirens were girls,” Sasha said, tilting her head curiously.

Rhys winced at that, ducking his head. “Yeah, well. Don't believe everything you hear.”

He expected them to leave, to huddle and talk to one another, probably about trying to get out of here as soon as possible, but they stayed near him while camp was being set up. They did talk, about what Jack might expect to find in the gorge and what the specs were on his guns. But they didn't stray far from Rhys.

It was . . . not as bad as he'd thought it might be. Rhys hung around the edges of the camp as it slowly formed. Eventually someone started cooking dinner and Rhys wandered closer to them again, arms around himself and shoulders drawn. “Hey.”

“Oh, so he deigns to speak to us again,” Sasha said, grinning. “Hey, yourself. Gonna bite us again? Need a muzzle?”

Rhys frowned. “You know, I'm already regretting walking over here.”

“Lighten up.” Fiona stuck her tongue out playfully and looked over the camp again. “I'll say one thing about Handsome Jack, he knows how to get together people who can cook a decent meal. Did you guys just bring all your own food?”

“Yeah,” Rhys said, breathing in, smelling the sharp tang of pasta spices. “Jack didn't think we could get any decent food on Pandora.”

Fiona sneered. “He would, the prick.”

“To be fair, the food around here isn't that great,” Sasha said. Fiona glared down at her. She shrugged. “I don't agree with him, I'm just pointing it out.”

“He'll use any excuse to talk about how awful Pandora is.” Fiona sighed and lowered her hat over her eyes. “I can't believe we got roped into this. He better let us go home the second he gets his precious vault.”

Sasha snorted. “Right, yeah. Because he's that kind.”

Rhys looked at them both, blinking slowly. “You two said . . . Hyperion is ruining Pandora, didn't you?”

“Yeah?” Fiona said. Like it was obvious.

“I mean, it's kind of a cesspool already, with all the bandits and dangerous animals and–”

Sasha hit him upside the head. Rhys swore, rubbing at his temple, and glared at her. Sasha didn't look in the least bit sorry, hands on her hips and fingers twitching with the need to hit him again. “You don't even live here,” she said. “How the hell would you know what it's like?”

“I– I've seen movies,” Rhys said, shaking the last of the pain away. “They tell us everything about Pandora up on Helios. They've got pictures and stuff, this place looks exactly like what I've seen. It's not the prettiest place.”

“As if that means anything,” Fiona spat, crossing her arms. “Tell me, how long have you been here? A week, two?”

“Um, about three now, I guess.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” She turned away, tension rolling off her entire frame.

Rhys shuffled, looking at the canyon and the way it opened from the earth like a great, threatening maw. He wouldn't believe that the vault was in there, but . . .

“If Hyperion has ruined Pandora,” he said slowly, ignoring the way Fiona stiffened, “then neither of you want Handsome Jack gaining any type of power, do you?”

Sasha's mouth gaped. “Of _course_ not, why the hell would we want that jackass ruining more people's lives? We might have had decent lives if he hadn't swept in and started sticking eridium mines wherever the hell he felt like.” Her words were sharp like a knife and Rhys flinched away from them.

The hatred was clear in both their eyes, a burning fire that would soon roar into leaping flames. If Handsome Jack had been standing there in that moment, both women would have leaped on him like tigers and ripped his throat out to toss over the edge of the gorge.

Rhys squared his shoulders and cleared his throat, trying to get anything foolish he could say out of his mind. “I'm sorry he's been such a pain. I . . . honestly didn't know.”

They stared at him for a long moment, wary, but Rhys only stared back, sincere and open.

Fiona tipped her hat back up. “Hey,” she said, quiet. “It's not like you asked him to kidnap you and force feed you eridium, right?”

“Definitely.” Rhys laughed, nervous. Sasha raised an eyebrow but Fiona nudged her and they both looked at Rhys with tentative camaraderie.

They had dinner with everyone else and went to bed early. Rhys curled up in his sleeping bag, the covers drawn up close over his face, buried deep in his pillows like they could shield him from the world. He could feel the weight of the coming day drawing closer, pressing on his chest, his arm, his powers tingling at the edges of his senses. Whatever the hell eridium really was, what it did, he couldn't be sure. But he remembered the rush of power and the feeling of drowning in electricity that had come with it, and he knew the rushing pulse that had rung in his blood and sung through his skin. It was glorious and terrifying, and Rhys curled up more in his bag at the thought of that feeling being forced on him whenever Jack saw fit.

Jack was silent when he finally came into the tent, stripping and getting into his sleeping bag without any fuss. Rhys didn't watch him sleep this time; his gun was still nearby and the vulnerable emptiness of Jack's face would only make Rhys’ heart twinge painfully, knowing he didn't have the skill or the guts to do anything about it.

He slept poorly that night, with fitful dreams of neon purple lights and a laugh that unsettled him deep in his core and made his breath shiver out in slow, shaking gasps.

He kept shivering through the night and into the morning. The tent flap was open, letting in the sun along with a chill that burrowed under Rhys' skin. He hissed and wrapped his arms tight around himself, wincing when his metal arm proved to be even worse than the frigid air.

Everyone in the camp was already awake and moving. Rhys rubbed the sleep from his eyes and blinked a few times, taking in the picture of people scrambling around on the ice like panicked lizards over water, carrying armfulls of documents and equipment.

The moment he stepped outside, Jack pounced on him, beaming from ear to ear. “Rhysie!” he said, like he was Jack’s favorite pet. Rhys looked at Jack with tired, narrowed eyes. Jack didn't seem bothered, striding up to him and putting both hands over Rhys' shoulder, firm like vices. “Rhysie, baby, today's the friggin' day! You're gonna take some of our nice eridium and tell me where the fucking vault is, okay?”

Discomfort made a fast nest in Rhys' belly and curled itself there, digging its claws into the edges of Rhys' ribcage. He jolted out of Jack's grip and nodded a few times, mumbling, “yeah, sure,” and leaving to find breakfast.

It was an easy omelette that sat heavy in his gut next to his sharp discomfort. Rhys fought to keep the food down while everyone around him scrambled to prepare for the opening of a vault. Rhys frowned, hands going tight at his side as he peered across the camp. They were confident that he would find the vault here, that their journey was finally over and they could start gathering the rewards like squirrels storing nuts. It sent a strong ping of anger down Rhys' spine and he turned away from the display, walking to the edge of the gorge and peering down into it.

Pandora was doomed. If Jack was right and Rhys found a vault here, he would take what was in it and make an even bigger fortune, plant a new headquarters here and use it to seek out bandits, shooting them down and waving whatever vault treasure he got in their faces like the world's shiniest trophy.

Rhys wouldn't be complicit in that. He _couldn't_. Even if Pandora really was the cesspool everyone insisted that it was, they didn't deserve to be shot down without question, for Hyperion to sinks its claws in every nook and cranny.

And if there were more people like Fiona and Sasha, frustrated, scared . . .

It was like a cat starving the mouse to death before it even got the chance to run. Rhys grit his teeth, edging closer to the gorge. As long as he had his powers Jack would keep him on a leash, yank him close every time Rhys tried to get away, and he could feel the weight of it like a collar around his neck. It was time to break the leash.

“Rhys?”

Someone calling his name made him jolt, and Rhys looked over his shoulder. Several people were staring at him. Jack glared, surrounded by a group of team members, his hands pressed hard on papers he’d been handing off. His entire frame had gone tense, coiled like a spring. “Rhysie,” he said slowly. “You're gonna fall off the edge.”

Breathing in deep, Rhys turned, facing the camp, edging backwards. His heart was hammering like a war signal in his chest and he could feel the bile rising in his throat. “I'm done,” he said shakily. His powers ran in a slow, warm hum under his skin, tattoos glowing vaguely, anticipating the danger. “I'm not helping you ruin this planet anymore.”

“Rhys,” Jack warned, pushing away from the crowd.

Rhys turned and leaped. Jack yelled. His heart surged, filled with regret. He could have run, could have hidden, there could have been another way that wasn't plunging to his death at the bottom of an icy gorge, electric fire snapping through his blood as he screamed.


	7. Chapter 7

Someone caught him around the collar. Rhys flailed and kicked but Jack had him too well, hand twisted up in his shirt, the other wrapping around his waist. “Goddamn idiot!” he screamed. “Quit struggling!”

“Fuck you!” Rhys spat, fighting harder, blood pounding in his ears, heat rushing out of his back, an explosion of pain and electricity singing through his body, eyes wrenched shut with the rush of his wings bursting out of his skin like the rising crescendo of a song.

The wind in his ears stopped. Rhys breathed out hard, chest full, fear and hatred and power twisting like a knotted rope.

Jack’s hands were tight around him. Rhys finally opened his eyes again to see one around his waist, the other clinging to a grappling hook on his belt. Jack had been fumbling to get it undone, to hook them into the cliff edge before they plummeted.

But it wasn't the grappling hook holding them up.

Rhys sucked in a harsh breath and twisted, looking over his shoulder. His wings were glowing, neon bright like a beacon, spread out fully and holding them aloft. They were levitating above the bottom of the canyon, ice peaks staggered below like a bed of frozen thorns, ready to run their bodies through the second they landed.

“Am I . . .” Rhys looked up at Jack again, lips parted, all words swallowed by the surge of electric power and the way the glow of his siren tattoos reflected off of Jack's mask.

“You're fucking lucky, is what you are,” Jack spat. “Get us the hell back up to solid ground so I can ring your fucking neck.”

Rhys frowned, wings vibrating roughly in the air like a signal charge. Jack growled and jerked, the first sign he'd ever given that Rhys' powers actually bothered him. Rhys smiled, perhaps a little too smug.

He looked up and saw the expedition team, a crowd peering over the edge, several faces ghostly pale, others scrunched in anger, everyone prepared to see them both bloody and splattered on the ground below.

Fiona cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Nice trick!”

Sasha flashed her a warning look and peered down again, glancing between them and the ground like she expected them to fall again any second.

Which . . . was a distinct possibility. Rhys wasn't quite sure how his wings were holding them both up.

He looked again at the ground that threatened to kill them. Breathing deep, Rhys concentrated on his wings, thinking of them as a solid mass that could lower him to the ground, electricity crackling next to his ears and making his hair stand on end.

Jack grunted and started squirming. “Cupcake, what the hell are you doing? We need to go _up_.”

“Yeah,” Rhys said, giving him a hard look, eyes narrowed. “I know that.”

“So what gives?!”

“I'm not letting you take me back,” he snapped, watching the cliffs carefully for anything that would have enough footing for him to settle. If he were lucky he could drop Jack and fly off, far away to live somewhere on Pandora. He sure as hell wasn't going back to Helios after this, Jack would never let him.

The thought of Vaughn and Yvette made his chest twinge. Rhys pushed through it.

There was the option of dropping Jack, forcing him to the icy depths to be pierced by the rocks, but Jack was clinging to him and if Rhys tried to fling him off he could end up impaled himself. His wings were shifting strangely, waving back and forth to shove them in rough bursts through the air. Rhys breathed out hard and focused on them, willing them to still.

“Jesus!” Jack said, jerking with the movement. “Control your damn wings!”

“I'm trying!” Rhys snapped. The lower they got the more the wings sparked and jittered, like something was deliberately messing with them.

A small explosion ripped through his back. Rhys yelled, nearly falling, wings flaring like an electric storm that clung to his back, tearing into his skin and sinking fiery teeth into his shoulders. Jack shouted again but Rhys couldn't hear it over the roar of noise in his ears. His wings vibrated again and they dropped, almost at the ice, yanked back up a second later. Their feet dangled just above where the spikes jutted out in rough peaks.

“Watch what you're fucking doing!” Jack snarled, reaching for his grappling hook.

Rhys' wings had settled again. He opened his eyes and saw, over Jack's shoulder, a space on the cliff. It was flat, jutting out, just enough for them to stand on. There was a small crack, something like a cavern, settled into the cliff face over it. He gritted his teeth and forced his wings to carry them to the ledge, settling as gently as he could manage; they landed with all the grace of a wild skag and nearly toppled over the edge again.

“Holy fucking shit,” Jack breathed, grabbing Rhys’ wrist to hold him upright. The ledge was barely big enough for them both. “Why the _hell_ did you do that?”

Rhys brushed himself down and started to talk but something zinged through him again, sharp like a needle and digging into his spine. He tensed, hands clenching, waiting until the tight feeling passed. He slumped, breathing hard, hands braced on his knees.

“Looking pretty blue there, cupcake,” Jack said without any sympathy, arms crossed over his chest. “You can get a medkit when we get back to the camp if you muscle up and bring us back now. Otherwise I can let you suffer for a while.”

“Shut up,” Rhys spat, struggling to stand upright again. The feeling sparked through him again, radiation out from his shoulders and spreading down his left side. He wheezed, moving around Jack to brace himself on the cliff face and maybe lean his hot skin on the ice.

The moment his hand touched it, his wings shot around him, curling like a shield, and Rhys' eyes snapped open when a flood of images hit him. Darkness, pale glowing, rough stones, and a sound like hissing ringing in his ears. He yelped and shot off the wall, straight into Jack's waiting arms which clung to his shoulders like vices.

“Rhysie!” Jack said, leaning over his shoulder. “What the hell?!”

“I felt . . . something,” Rhys said, before he could think better of it. His eyes went wide when he realized his admission and he looked back at Jack, lips parted, brow furrowed.

Jack stared back, a grin slowly stretching the edges of his mask, the expression twisted on the thick plastic. “‘Something,’ huh? Sounds like something worth exploring to me.” He let Rhys go and hurried up to the cliff face, spreading both hands over the icy rocks, searching. 

Rhys backed up a step and tried to force his wings to stretch out again, to carry him off the cliff before Jack tried to use him. But exhaustion was edging into his bones and the shock of touching the cliff had left him panting, struggling just to stand, let alone use his wings again.

Jack pulled a gun out, flipping it over his hands in a way that was absolutely meant to show off, and blasted the opening in the rock face. Rhys yelped and ducked, hands covering over his face. Jack just chuckled and fired a few more shots, bits of rock and ice pinging around them, scattering at Rhys' feet.

Rhys uncurled slowly, standing at a glacial pace and avoiding looking at the crevice until he was sure he wouldn't collapse on himself. He turned and grimaced at the sight.

Jack had opened up the crevice to reveal a hidden cavern in the rocks. It was bent and jagged, barely big enough to fit a person. Jack grinned at the sight of it, putting his gun back in his belt and grabbing the edges of the opening, thrusting himself inside. Rhys winced. “Jack? Is that safe?”

“Probably not,” Jack said, squishing himself inside the opening. “But we're finding out what the hell made you do that.” He grunted, the edges of the rocks and ice catching on his clothes, digging into his skin. The most Jack seemed bothered about was his face, turning it in minute degrees to keep the rocks from scratching his mask. “Come on, pumpkin, we don't got all day.”

Rhys' heart skipped a beat and he stepped back automatically, debating how much time he would have to leave, with Jack wedged into the wall. But . . . his shoulders were still tired and his muscles ached, everything in his body focused on the wings and the glowing tattoos. If he tried to fly he’d plunge into the icy rocks. As much as Rhys had been willing to do that spur of the moment, the reality of falling into the bottom of a canyon had woken him up to how much he didn't _actually_ want to die.

“Fine,” he groused, his entire body going rigid as he moved to the cavern's entrance. He waited for Jack to wiggle through before going in himself.

It was tight, tighter than he'd expected. Rhys had to keep his arms close to his sides and contort his legs to wedge himself in. His wings zapped once and faded, a quick shock that had Rhys breathing hard, teeth clenched. His tattoos were still glowing, though, pain burning through the rest of his body.

He almost wished he would get stuck and end the job here, but Jack's crew was at the top of the cliff. If he didn’t come back they would come down and find him.

It was odd that they weren't doing that now, actually. Rhys had no idea how much they'd seen but they couldn't have been completely oblivious once Jack's shots started ringing through the air. A group would probably be grappling down any minute, panicked and ready to get their CEO out of the canyon as fast as possible.

There was no noise as Rhys squeezed through, though. He gasped and pushed himself past the rocks, landing hard on his feet and nearly planting himself face first on the cavern floor. Jack caught him by the collar and yanked him up, dusting off his own clothes and glancing around. “Dark as shit,” he muttered, and patted down the pockets of his coat, pulling out what looked at first like a flare. He clicked a button and it lit up, a long, rectangular light that shone over the edges of the cavern.

Rhys wrinkled his nose at how much ice covered it. He hadn't brought boots with any traction; his heels were deathtraps waiting to happen. Jack didn't waste time, walking deeper into the cavern. “Jack,” Rhys warned, putting a hand on the wall. His metal hand didn’t have the same shocking effect when it braced on the ice and Rhys edged carefully into the cavern. Jack was getting ahead quickly, his steps assured and unafraid, bringing the flashlight farther and farther from where Rhys stood. “Jack!” he repeated, urgent.

“Hm?” Jack turned, eyebrow raised, half his face cast in harsh shadow. “Oh, for the love of– are you gonna be a dainty angel about this the whole time?”

“Heeled. Boots.” Rhys pointed to his feet. 

Jack rolled his eyes and stalked back toward him, thrusting his elbow out roughly. “Hang on, kid, we probably have a long way to go.”

Rhys looked at Jack's elbow and back up to his face. Tentatively he reached out and took it, wrapping both arms carefully over the heavy jacket. Jack yanked his arm close and Rhys yelped, colliding with him. He struggled to get his feet under him and once he did, Jack walked fast, not willing or able to waste precious time.

He flipped on his ECHOcomm and said, “Jack here. We climbed into a weird cavern, something's up about it with Rhysie here. I'll keep ya posted, we're all fine though. Get someone on some climbing equipment and get down here, we might need the backup.” He flicked it off again, holding the flashlight up high with his free hand to look around the cavern. It was still small and cramped, with barely enough space to hold himself and Rhys, let alone the team that Jack obviously wanted to bring down.

“What do you even expect to find?” Rhys griped, still clinging to Jack's arm. He could feel the slippery edge of the ice underneath his boots and how easily he'd slide if he lost even a tiny bit of traction, his hands wrapped over Jack's elbow in a vice grip.

“Whatever made you freak out,” Jack snapped, still waving the flashlight around. “If there's one thing I've learned from exploring Pandora, kitten, it's that you don't let a hunch . . . go . . .” Jack skidded to a stop, words failing him. Rhys looked up from staring at the floor and clinging in a death grip to see what the hell was so important.

The cavern had widened, the walls parting like the red sea into a wide, empty room. His eyes went wide as they settled on the far wall, staring at the structure looming in front of them.

It was a door.

Rhys knew the symbol from his very soul, the recognition rising up and punching him square in the chest. He wheezed and nearly fell off Jack's arm. Jack hoisted him back up quickly, his hand tight around Rhys' waist and fingers curled possessively over his hip. “There it is,” he purred. “The vault's door.”

It was a sharp arch carved into the wall, like an upside down V, three times as tall as Rhys, twice as wide. The curve in the stone wall was sharp but smooth, a deep indent that left no doubt about the symbol's shape. A vault in the middle of nowhere, down a ravine . . .

“We found it!” Jack said, throwing his head back in a deep laugh. “God damn it, Rhysie, we _found_ it!”

“Y-Yeah.” Rhys swallowed around the lump in his throat, feeling it settle deep in a pit at the base of his stomach. His tattoos were still glowing and there was an itch on his back, like his wings would burst out of him at any second. Rhys didn't think he could handle another drain on his energy like that. He would collapse where he stood.

“We got it!” Jack said again, and Rhys looked at him, confused, until he realized Jack had turned his ECHOcomm back on. “We got the vault, it's here in this cave. Nobody would find the damn thing without a tracker like Rhys. Get everybody else down here as fast as you can.” He hung up and grinned down at Rhys, like a lion ready to rip his throat out.

“O-Okay, I think I can keep my own balance.” Rhys wriggled and Jack released him, letting him brace himself on the wall of the cave. Rhys' tattoos pulsed, a wave of heat washing over his left side. He hissed and breathed out shakily, fingers curling against the ice. “Shit.”

“See? This has to be the right place.” Jack looked at the vault door, scanning it up and down.

“You don't . . . you don't have a key, though,” Rhys said, shoving off the wall and throwing his arms out to keep his balance. “Don't you need a vault key to unlock it?” He'd heard plenty about the vault keys, how rare they were, how much Hyperion would be willing to pay for one. There were endless files about vault keys in the system that Rhys had had to look over when searching for a deal he and Vaughn could snatch, trying to find patterns or clues that could be valuable enough of a lead to follow.

Jack turned to him slowly, still with the manic smile that unsettled Rhys from the base of his spine to the ends of his limbs. He froze under that gaze, heart thumping hard in his chest. “Jack?”

“Rhysie, did you really think I would come here without a key? Do you think I'm _stupid_? Because that's, that's just precious, really.” He moved close, grin widening.

Rhys scrambled back but the ice betrayed him again. Jack caught his wrist and yanked him upright. “I've got the perfect key right here, baby.” He dragged Rhys close to the vault door and pushed him until his flesh hand was up against the center of the symbol, tattoos flashing and heat whirling down his skin, burning down it like a flame down an oil line. Rhys screamed, raw and ripping out of his throat, the fire uncoiling and bursting like a sharp explosion over every line of his tattoos, every curve that had marked his skin since he was a child.

The heat burst from his palm and scorched over the rock, slipping into every crevice and curling over the edges of the vault symbol, blue light filling the edges until the symbol was glowing bright like electric blue sparks. Slices of pain tore down Rhys' back which pulled taught like violin strings, singing down his muscles. His wings burst free again, power surging through and flaring out behind him.

“There's your goddamn key!” Jack cheered, laughing, but the sound was faint in Rhys' ears, the heat and fire taking over everything. Shocks of pain skittered down his skin and he struggled to get free but Jack wouldn't let go, holding him to the vault's door, watching Rhys' powers flood it and rip open the rocks to reveal a swirling mass of blue light that burst from the center and filled out the door's edges.

The pain stopped. Rhys opened his eyes. The vault door was activated, swirling blue light filling the insides. It glowed bright enough to fill the entire cavern, shining across their faces and over the ice that covered the walls. Rhys breathed hard, blinking slowly. The entire world felt like it'd been tipped upside down and his back ached, wings stuttering around him. Electric bursts jumped off their edges and danced around his skin. Rhys focused on them for a moment, getting his bearings on the rest of the world.

“Are you guys coming down here? Yeah, well, it's not fast enough!” Jack was yelling into his ECHOcomm again, pacing the room, eyes fixed on the vault door. “I'm– yes! Look, it's open, we got it, I need back up down here. There's no telling what's inside that thing, I want as many guns as possible, capisce?”

Rhys frowned, looking at the vault door. He'd opened it; there would be alien treasures and untold fortune inside. He didn't even have his goddamn _bag_ that he'd brought so he could steal alien loot and sell it. There'd been too much rage in him to think when he'd jumped down the cliff, rushing through it, Fiona and Sasha's words like whining bells in his mind.

So much for escaping to one of the Edens with Yvette and Vaughn. He hadn't even called them today . . .

Jack was waiting for the team to storm whatever was inside the vault. Rhys wouldn't have a chance to do anything once everyone squeezed into the cavern. 

“Jack,” he said, surprised at the gravelly quality of his own voice. Standing up straight was a herculean effort and Rhys breathed hard. His wings tucked around him, gentle sparks running down his arms, over the wirey tattoos. “You forced me to come here,” he said, through Jack's urgent words into the ECHOcomm. “You used me.”

“Huh?” Jack slowed to a stop and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Kitten, I don't have time for this, I've gotta make sure everybody else gets down here–”

“I'm not your _kitten_ ,” Rhys hissed. “And I'm done playing the part of your toy. I'm getting away, once and for all.” It was the speech he hadn't had the chance to make on the cliff edge and Rhys relished the way Jack's expression slid from impatience to confusion, and then to anger, when Rhys took the first step toward the vault.

“Rhysie, get the hell back here!”

But Rhys wasn't listening and he was closer to the vault door than Jack. He turned and leaped, feeling the curve and stretch of alien technology as he passed through the opening. His wings flickered and flared, spreading out like he'd fallen again, ready to catch him, and Rhys breathed in what felt like oxygen but was too pure, too clear, and his lungs stuttered at the taste of it filling his body.

The euphoria only lasted a second. Rhys hit something hard and tumbled, cursing, wings sparking around him. “Fuck,” he spat, clutching at his knee where it had knocked into a hard floor.

“Idiot!” Jack's voice echoed strangely but Rhys didn't have the energy to look at him, focused on getting up. The floor beneath him felt smooth, solid, like carved marble but somehow softer. He shook his head and finally opened his eyes to look around.

Purple. Everything was purple and blue and it hurt Rhys' eyes. He blinked a few times to shake away the shock of color, breathing fast and sitting up to look all around him. He'd landed on a hard floor of glowing purple stone that almost looked like eridium, but somehow harder, smooth all the way across the way eridium was only when it got refined. Around them were walls of iridescent purple and blue, like someone had taken ice and painted over the surface, the reflections of the room glinting off of them. All the walls were the same, shimmering like pearled clouds, rising up above his head.

Rhys only had a few moments to be awed by it all before Jack's tirade of cursing started. He swore up a storm that was quickly followed by the sounds of bangs pinging off the walls. Rhys turned to see him pounding with both fists, hitting hard enough to open his skin and leave blood stains on the perfect opal walls.

He was hitting the vault door, which was now once again just a symbol in the wall. No light, no shining portal, nothing. Just the empty arch, carved into the wall. It had closed behind them. 

“Fucking hell!” Jack hit the wall again and cursed, bringing his hand back to cradle it to his chest, blood smearing over his shirt. “Son of a bitch, this isn't what was supposed to happen!” He whirled around, teeth bared, eyes wide and vibrating with the intent to murder. “ _You_ got us trapped here, you ungrateful little prick!”

Jack marched toward him, murder in his eyes. Rhys scrambled up, wings flashing out to the sides, and it was only now that Rhys realized that his wings were still out, that he'd crashed on the floor but his knee didn't hurt anymore, that the ache that had been in his muscles was gone. When he breathed it was like a wave of energy, filling his lungs and exploding through the rest of his body. He backed away quickly and ducked when Jack threw a punch with his good hand, one wing folding in front of him like a shield. “Jack!” he snapped. “Calm down, this isn't getting us anywhere!”

“We're stuck, you little–”

“So now let's figure out how to leave!” Rhys' other wing came up and when Jack swung down electricity sparked off of it, winding over Jack's arms and snapping down his spine. Jack flinched, teeth grit, and finally stood still, his entire body strung with a tension that said he'd lunge the second Rhys gave him an opening.

“Jack,” Rhys said slowly, both hands up in defense. “If there's a way into the vault, there's gotta be a way out.” He glanced to the side, at the pillars and walls of glowing alien material, down what looked like a long stretching corridor ahead of them. The ceiling arched over their heads and there were clumps of rocks with the same opalescent quality piled near some of the walls, dotted around the hall with no apparent purpose. 

“This looks like a hallway,” he said, looking at Jack again, who was breathing so hard Rhys half expected steam to come out of his nostrils. “If we follow it there should be something to tell us where we're going, right? Besides, didn't you want the vault treasure? It's obviously not in this room.”

Jack's eyes flicked to the hallway and back to Rhys. “You're right about that, but these vaults don't just have treasure. This is alien shit, there's stuff here that's thousands of years old, stuff you can't even imagine.”

Rhys frowned and glanced at his wings, making a conscious effort to part them and flap them a few times, electric shocks radiating off their surfaces. “And I'm a siren. You said it yourself, sirens are connected to vaults. I feel great just _existing_ in here. Whatever is waiting for us, I can probably handle it.”

Jack's lips twisted in a feral snarl but he didn't say anything, considering. He straightened and put a hand to his ear, flicking his ECHOcomm on. “Hello?” he said, frown deepening when no one answered. “Yeah, that's what I thought. No one can reach us in this goddamn place.” He sighed, dropping his hand and rubbing the cuts on his knuckles. The blood had stopped pouring but it still dripped, splattering over his boots and the shimmering floor. “Fine. You're right for once. We're not getting anywhere by sticking around here.” He gestured down the hall with a wicked smile. “Why don't you lead us, since you know so much about this damn place?”

Rhys wrinkled his nose and looked down the hall that opened like a great mouth in front of them, the clumps of rocks like glowing teeth and the floor below a long, flat purple tongue that invited them deeper into the depths of the vault. “Fine,” he said, curt, and started down the hallway. “Don't get yourself killed. And wrap something around your hand, you're gonna bleed out.”

Jack snorted. “Not likely, kitten, although I appreciate your concern. My hand is just fine. It hurts a lot less than that time I punched the wall of my office. Some incompetent jackass forgot to pay for a shipment of guns and I had to show him what it's like to 'forget' how strong of a punch you can throw. Man, his guts were on my wall for a _days_.”

Shivers skittered down Rhys' spine and he kept his eyes decidedly off of Jack. Instead he let them wander over the inside of the vault again. Jack's ECHOcomm had failed them but when he blinked his eye was still working, able to scan everything inside the room, although when he tried all he got were empty data slots. At least it still worked. He quietly set his ECHOeye to record, in case he missed something that they'd need to look at again later. 

The walls of the vault were smooth and polished, absent of any crack or flaw. Rhys only knew the rumors about eridians that had spread across Helios and got twisted in corporate gossip. He didn't trust a lot of what he heard drifting around Helios, and nothing like _this_ had ever come up.

The rock clumps, with their odd misshapen quality and lack of consistency with the rest of the vault's hall, made Rhys' brow furrow. “Why do you think these are here?” he asked, pointing at one. “They don't really fit with the whole 'tall, otherworldly, and polished' look that's going on here.”

Jack's eyes flicked to the rock clumps. “No idea.”

“You don't even have a _guess_? How much research did you do on this vault again?”

When Rhys looked over his shoulder Jack's eyes were hard steel and he flinched away, focusing on the stretching hallway. Jack still had his guns, and Rhys hadn't had the foresight to bring one.

“Listen, cupcake,” Jack said slowly, as if talking to a child, “no one knows anything about these vaults. All the shit that I heard was guesswork and hearsay, and even then, we only found the damn thing because you got some weird premonition about it being in the goddamn ice fields. And _then_ we only got it because you were stupid and jumped off a cliff. This shit isn't supposed to be easy to find, let alone learn anything about. So no, I don't know what the weird rock things are for, and I don't see how I'm _supposed_ to have known that, and if you keep sassing me I'm gonna pull my pistol out and shoot you in the foot just to teach ya a lesson.”

“Okay!” Rhys said, wings fluttering behind him. “Okay, I get it. Sorry.”

“One thing you gotta learn, kitten, I'm fucking terrifying even when you're alone with me. I'd say especially when you're alone with me, in fact.”

“Yeah,” Rhys said, voice strained, “yeah, I'm starting to get that.”

Jack chuckled but didn't say anything else and Rhys took that as his cue to shut up.

The end of the hallway was finally edging into view, distant but clear, ending in a flat wall. No vault symbol, no handle, no alien language describing what to do when they came to it, nothing. “It's . . . blank.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock, I can see that.” Jack walked up close to the wall and started feeling around it, running his good hand up and down the strange purple stone. “You'd think for once in their lives these aliens would wanna make this simple, but no, it's gotta be some complication every time. Weird monsters, hallways that go nowhere, stupid random rock clumps . . .”

“Monsters?” Rhys said, swallowed. “Wh-What do you mean, monsters?”

“Huh? Oh.” Jack shrugged. “Last two vaults I messed with, there was some horrible creature inside. I figure the aliens just wanna protect their shit, it makes sense. Always gotta be something with these eridians, it's like they get a kick out of torturing us and making their treasures damn near impossible to get to.”

“So there's going to be a _monster_?” Rhys screeched, heat filling up his lungs and vibrating down his back, wings curling in to shield him automatically. “You didn't say anything about a monster!”

“What, you thought the treasure would just be sitting there in a shiny box? Dream on, kid, these are eridians we're talking about. Nothing is easy with them.”

Rhys backed away quickly, breathing fast, mouth wide open to suck in as much of the weirdly pure air as he could. Skags, raks, stalkers, they were terrifying but they were things he'd heard about, stuff he'd seen videos of long before coming to Pandora. Even seeing a skag in person and having that weird . . . _moment_ with it . . . Rhys had been reassured by the multiple people with multiple guns.

But a vault monster could be anything, horrible enough to protect an ancient treasure.

He moved away from the wall quickly, suddenly afraid it would open up and swallow them both, and leaned on the first available support. The rock clumps still stuck out of the floors and Rhys put both hands out, settling them on the top and bending over it to try and take the weight off of his shaking knees.

A jolt shot through his left hand and struck Rhys directly in the heart. It was like a bullet shot right through his chest and Rhys gasped, nearly braining himself on the rock when he bowed his head, breathing in open flames that licked the inside of his throat, hot electricity buzzing through his wings and digging with sharp claws into his back.

The wall was solid, tight, an unbreakable force to anyone who tried to get past it. Unless . . .

His wings beat once and slapped down on the rock, shattering it. Rhys stumbled back, the vibrations tingling in his lips, the tips of his fingers, tattoos turned a fire brand on his skin. He shook himself hard and it took a long moment to find his feet again, resting back on the ground. His wings had shot him in the air and he took a long moment to breathe when he found the floor again. 

“What in the ever loving _fuck_ , princess?”

Rhys blinked and turned. Jack was glaring at him, injured hand tangled through the back of his hair, clenched tight. “Would ya _warn_ me before you set off explosions? Huh?”

“That's–” Rhys swallowed, his mouth dry, and he glanced back at where the clump of rocks had been, at where now there were shattered remains scattered on the polished floor. “I didn't know I could do that.”

“Holy fuck, those powers are like a goddamn time bomb. You're lucky you're useful or I would have killed you just to stop the noise.”

Rhys scowled and shot Jack a harsh look. “With that kind of attitude I guess I won't tell you how to open the door.”

Jack's aggravation slipped away fast, replaced by confusion and wide eyes. He blinked them away quickly and said, “What door? Did you find something, Rhysie?”

“Maybe,” Rhys said, forcing as much nonchalance as he could into his voice. His blood was still singing and his wings buzzed, edged at the tips with fire and electric hums. “That rock didn't explode for no reason, you know. I think . . .” He paused, licking his lips. “I think the vault _spoke_ to me.”

“Oh, good, you're hearing voices.”

“Are you going to be nice or not?” Rhys snapped. “Because as I see it, I'm the only way you can make any progress here, and you're pissing me off.”

Jack snorted, lips twisting in a feral grin. “Oh, yeah, I'm so worried.”

“Then you don't want to know about the door out of here.”

“As much as you don't want a bullet in your brain, yeah.”

Rhys' eyes narrowed and he stood taller, flapping his wings a few times in Jack's direction. “Then I guess you're losing your siren, because I'm not doing anything until you quit the yelling and actually give me a civil answer.”

Jack raised an eyebrow and Rhys continued, “You're talking to the man who jumped off the edge of a cliff because he was tired of you bossing him around. Do you really think a bullet to my head would be any more unpleasant?”

“I could strangle you instead,” Jack offered, holding one hand out casually, fingers flexing. “It'd make you wish you were dead, and _much_ more willing to give me the answers I want.”

Rhys curled his wings around himself and breathed out hard, letting the rush of power fill them and make them glow from base to tip, surrounding him with a harsh blue light that bounced off the floor and shone like lightning flashes over Jack's face. Sparks jumped off the edges and danced in the air, waving like wild grass in the wind.

Jack grunted and dropped his hand. “Okay, okay, I don't need a friggin' light show. Just show me what you can do with the goddamn door.”

Smiling, Rhys let his wings fall back and walked up to the wall. It was smooth. There was no seam or indent to indicate a kind of entrance and anyone who didn't know how to operate it would have given up. Whatever was inside the vault, it was locked to anyone without extensive knowledge of alien technology.

Rhys didn't have that knowledge, but he had siren powers, and those apparently were good enough for the job.

He felt around the wall, the surface like warm ice under his hands, smooth and easy to glide over but solid, unbreakable. Rhys breathed in, his wings drifting closer to the wall, brushing over it, and he could feel it where they touched, searching for the key.

The second his hand brushed over it, Rhys placed his palm flat on the wall and turned it to the side, fingers close together and laid out straight. His tattoos glowed and he sucked in a sharp breath, letting it out slowly as the wall lit up beneath his hand, the light spreading out in a pattern of lines and circles that grew out like a web, paths forming and running up, down, to the sides, until it spread across the entire wall and shone like an iridescent beam.

“What the fuck!” Jack said, but he sounded pleased, a laugh rumbling under his words. Rhys grinned and stepped back, watching the glow slowly fade, a hint of the marks left in the door. A beat passed, and another.

“Uh, well?” Jack asked, moving next to Rhys. “Is anything gonna–”

He was cut off by a groaning noise, and the wall splitting down the middle as it broke open, swinging out away from them and scraping across the great floor. The marks glowed again briefly and faded. Where there had once been a solid wall, there was now an open doorway, leading to another hallway that went even deeper into the vault. This one was taller, the ceilings pointed like the sharp arches of a church and webs of combed, porous rocks stretched between the pillars. There were still rocks on the floor, like pikes along the edges. The hallway seemed to dip down at the end but it was too far to see from where they stood.

“Let's go,” Rhys said proudly, striding past the doorway.

Jack spent a moment being flabbergasted but quickly overtook Rhys, leading the way down the hall. “Man, I gotta get something like that for my office. A door I can unlock with big glowing bits that swings out like a fucking castle gate? Hell yeah.”

Rhys rolled his eyes and let Jack lead. If there was something dangerous in the vault he had no problem letting Jack be the first to walk into it.

The click of their boots on the floor was the only noise. Rhys still felt buzzed, like he'd had a beer but not something strong enough to knock him out. His wings flexed around him, flicking back and forth with little sparks that trailed off the edges. Their entire trip had led to this, and now, being inside the vault, Rhys had to admit he was a little disappointed. At least the architecture was pretty.

Something niggled at the back of his mind, a question burrowing into his brain. Rhys swallowed and looked at Jack. The back of his hair bounced, Jack’s hair gel wearing off. Rhys licked his lips. “Hey, Jack?”

“What's up, buttercup?”

The pet name made him frown but Rhys pushed on. “What are you going to do after all this? You seemed so hellbent on getting to the vault and now you're here. So . . .”

“I'm gonna get whatever treasure is in this thing,” he said simply. “And then I'm gonna take as much of the other shit in here as I can and sell it for billions.”

“Right,” Rhys said slowly. “I kind of figured money was the plan. But, like . . . what about _me_?” The question burned coming off his tongue and Rhys almost regretted saying it. But it needed to be put out there and he didn't know a better time than when he and Jack were truly alone.

The question made Jack pause and he glanced at Rhys over his shoulder. “You? Well, that depends on a lot. Your attitude, for one. I've got the vault right here, I don't exactly need you for that once we're done. You do seem to have some useful hacking skills, although I think even there I could probably still beat you. Not many people have a siren in their possession, though.” Jack slipped his hands into his pockets, swaying as he walked, like a lazy cat. “Maybe I'll keep you mounted on a wall somewhere, show you off when nosy execs blame me for all their problems, let them know what happens when you cross me.”

Rhys stumbled, staring at Jack. “That's . . .” A vivid image of himself up on Jack's wall in a display case, his wings frozen in cryogenic fluid like a preserved butterfly, had his throat closing up and hands shaking.

“Ha! Your face.” Jack shook his head, grinning. “Nah, kitten, I'll keep you, don't worry about being mounted up. You have a lot of potential and I don't intend to waste it.”

Rhys scowled and put a hand over his chest to calm his racing heart. The jokes didn’t work when Jack was more than happy to murder left and right. People _still_ talked about the intern who spilled hot coffee in Jack's lap once.

His wings fluttered again, buzzing. The hallway was getting narrower and the floor felt like it was dipping. He looked ahead, electricity sparking off his skin like a livewire that ran through the ground, out from his feet and pulsing in the smooth stone.

They were reaching the end again and the wall this time was a large, sweeping half cylinder. The floor looked . . . off. It wasn't until they got closer, the elevation lowering with each step, that Rhys saw where they were going.

The floor dropped out suddenly into a wide, gaping hole. There were more comb-like protrusions inside and clumps of rocks jutting out, twisting in a web of shelves and branches that glowed shades of blue and purple. The tunnel looked like it dropped forever, possibly into the core of Pandora itself. If the vaults even had a physical space in Pandora beyond their doors, that was. It was possible they were in another dimension entirely.

“Time to jump,” Jack said cheerfully, grabbing his gun and leaping off the edge.

“Jack!” Rhys screeched, wincing at the pain of it scraping through his throat. Jack paid him no mind, landing on the nearest shelf of rock and looking back up.

“Hey!” he said. “You said yourself, we're not getting anywhere by standing around! Jump in!”

The tunnel was made of glowing blue walls and when Rhys looked down into it his tattoos pulsed warmly, like they were eager for the rest of his body to get down there, but he still couldn't see the bottom and there was no way of knowing if Jack would suddenly turn on him and shove him down to his death below.

He'd said he was willing to die, though. Rhys didn't have anything to threaten Jack with if he was too much of a coward for a simple jump.

Taking a deep breath, Rhys leaped, heart tittering in his chest. He aimed to land on a shelf of rock next to Jack but the fall was too slow, too controlled, and it took a long second to realize that his wings were beating, keeping him aloft the way they had in the canyon. The power of the vault had them charged and zapping everything around them, and it was easy to float himself gently down to the rocks below, landing so softly that Rhys would have thought the rocks were made of pillows.

“Cheater,” Jack said, scoffing playfully. “Come on, it looks like we've got a lot of ground to cover.” He leaped fearlessly again, landing hard on the rocks and taking only a moment to recover before he leaped again.

Rhys followed, using his wings to steer and soften each landing. With his slowed descents he could jump farther than Jack, and for every three rock shelves Jack jumped down, Rhys slowly descended the same amount, twisting around the combed, spongy branches that extended from the walls and made navigating the tunnel a maze of its own.

It was hard to keep track of time in the vault. Rhys could try counting the seconds but that only worked until he got bored, and the automatic clock in his ECHO system was thrown off by the vault, the numbers switching back and forth until he finally closed to application. For all he knew time didn't even pass the same way in the vaults; they might return to Pandora before they'd ever left.

Jack hurried, jumping down the rock shelves as fast as he could manage without breaking his legs. It was a long time before he finally stopped to catch his breath, and Rhys took the chance to get ahead, moving a few levels down on his own. He should have been tired by now but whatever it was about the vault that resonated with his powers was also keeping him rested and ready, wings buzzing and flicking as if they were really alive.

It was an age later when they finally reached the bottom. Rhys could see it, another floor of glowing purple waiting for them, and he aimed for it when he jumped again, letting himself be carried down. There weren't spikes or a pit of lava waiting for them, and that was some measure of comfort. He landed softly and waited for Jack to jump down with him, crashing hard onto the floor in a rolled ball, standing quickly and brushing his hands through his hair. “Woo, that was fun. Come on, kitten, we can't slow down now.”

Rhys rolled his eyes but listened, following Jack into the small room in front of them.

It didn't look like anything special. The room was round, with a domed ceiling where it opened away from the tunnel, polished walls curving up into the center. There were no pillars or rocks or spongy branches, just pearlescent walls of purple and blue sheen. Rhys' wings folded up and extended like restless hands.

“What the hell,” Jack griped, hands on his hips. “There's nothing here! Why the fuck did we come all this way for a dinky little place like this?”

“We thought we'd hit a dead end before,” Rhys pointed out. “There's probably more to this room, too.” He walked up to the walls, tracing his fingers over it. His tattoos pulsed warmly, a flood of energy hitting him like a rush, and Rhys sighed at the feeling of it. His wings curled in tight, surrounding him, and the electric sparks brushed his skin, tingling pleasantly with small shocks that made his whole body relax.

He could feel Jack's eyes on him, staring, but Rhys was too deep in the vault's powers now. Everything inside it seemed to hum to Rhys, calling to him like a pale echo. He moved around the room, tracing his hand over the wall to hear it singing in the back of his mind. It was like touching the skag, the vault rocks, the eridium, only less intense, thrumming through him like the tune of cello strings pulled taut and vibrating with a deep melody. He pushed his hand on the wall until his palm was flat against it, the pads of his fingers suddenly warmer, like sinking his hand into warm tea. He closed his eyes and let himself be guided by touch, circling around the room.

The texture of the wall changed but before Rhys could open his eyes his hand was sinking in, slipping into something and locking. His hand had submerged into the wall, the purple material closed like honey liquid around it, too solid to yank it back out. “Fuck! Jack!” he cried, grabbing his wrist with his metal hand and pulling. Something rubbery and solid had sealed like a vacuum around his hand and yanking it just hurt, twinging hard around his wrist where his metal fingers clasped. Rhys hissed and let go, a high whine starting in his throat.

Jack was at his side then, feeling around the wall. “What the ever loving fuck,” he muttered, pushing at it, but even the wall around Rhys' hand refused to give, solidified around him and trapping him there. “Hang on, kid, we're gonna get you out of this. Damn aliens and their goddamn booby traps.”

Rhys bit his lip, trying to wiggle his fingers inside the wall. They were warm again but this time from the outside, the vacuum seal trapping a heat that shivered down his entire arm.

His wings flashed and spread out, extending wide with a thunder crack. Jack swore and Rhys ducked his head but he could already feel it, electricity pulsing down his body and whirling around his arm, tattoos suddenly lit like neon signs. The energy of the vault was in him, a storm rising up with typhoon waves of electricty. It sang in his heart, in his lungs, in his blood, pumping hard and fast and so loud that Jack's voice was drowned out.

The seal around Rhys' hand changed and his fingers curled down, grasping something. He breathed in sharply and pulled at it without thinking. There was a loud click that finally drowned out the sound of his own blood in his ears.

The wall released him, melting away and opening up like some kind of alien pod chamber. The wall opened and there was a large panel inside, the edges of the opening glowing and spreading out, mapping in a network of paths that looked like circuitry. Where his hand had been trapped there was now a panel, some kind of internal control. Rhys moved back, watching the glowing circuitry pattern spread over the entire room.

“This isn't what I expected,” Jack muttered, staring up at the ceiling in awe as the glowing pattern joined at the top and shimmered, bright like a sun concentrated within the alien walls. “Hot damn, this isn't what I expected.”

“What am I . . . what did . . .” Rhys couldn't find the words, could only stutter and stare at the control panel still set in the wall. There were things that looked like they could be buttons or switches, all of it curved and glowing oddly like a set of fungi. He reached out, tattoos still lit up over his arm, and placed his hand over them.

Electric shocks zapped from his toes up to his fingers and Rhys' breath hitched, but he couldn't focus on the pain, eyes wide and vision blanking out as it thrummed with steady drum beats in his veins.

Skags. It was the first thing he saw and it blinked away just as fast. Bandits camped out in cities of broken metal and ash. Stalkers climbing the mountains. Frozen wastelands and hot desert, spread over the wide surface of a planet eroded through the center from the eridium blight. It ran through his mind and stuck to the surface like boiling honey, hot and sweet and urgent. Rhys could smell electric smoke when he inhaled and feel feet running over his skin like the creatures of Pandora themselves were walking over him, and for a hot half second he could feel the entire planet, a symphony of noise and breath washing across with a hot rain of life.

It was gone, just as suddenly as it came. Rhys' eyes snapped open. He could see the control panel, still lit up, his hand still over it. He swallowed and pressed down gently, the buttons compressing under his hands.

Some of the circuitry lit up along the walls, a path snaking up and out to the center. Rhys followed it, mouth agape, the flash gone in seconds. “I think . . . this is a guide for the vault,” he said slowly, looking at the panel. It was taller than him, too tall to reach all of the alien controls, but he could get most of them on tiptoe. The buttons under his hand were warm, like living creatures.

“What?” Jack was there, too close, making Rhys flinch. He leaned in, brushing his fingers over the panel. The controls didn't respond the same way, still glowing but without the flare of brightness that shone under Rhys' hand. “Okay, so does it know how to get the hell out of here? I want the damn treasure.”

“I think so.” Rhys moved closer, pushing Jack away, and put both hands over the panel. His metal hand didn't get the same reaction of bright glow but he could see the iridescent flash over the panel, like it recognized him even without skin or siren tattoos. He could feel his entire left side, warm like a fire in the cold months, like hot chocolate made fresh, the kind of warmth that made Rhys want to tuck into a large sweater and a wool blanket and never get up, as the glowing lights sung gently in a language he couldn’t understand. He closed his eyes, breathing deep.

It was like the wall from before. None of it was an exact science and trying to force it to listen to him wouldn't work. When Rhys delved into electronic systems he had to search for what he was looking for; he couldn't force any of the information to come up, he had to find where it had been hidden and unlock it carefully, and the rules were the same here.

Rhys didn't know how to push himself into the vault's system. He didn't even know if the system was compatible with him. All he knew was that he'd felt it, felt _Pandora_ , and that he was already somehow connected. If he needed to find the vault's exit, he could. The controls were warm under both of his hands and he pressed in, feeling at the panel, the wall, the whole of the vault itself, wings shimmering with electric power and spreading out over as much of the wall as they could. The circuitry glowed where his wings touched it, blinking like piano notes. Rhys screwed his eyes shut, letting himself be enveloped by alien power that hummed a song in his blood.

There was an exit. Near the center of the vault there was another door, a way to go back to where they'd come and survive the trip. If they could pass through this room it would be very close, a tall arch waiting for them, glowing bright and blue with electric tendrils of power that would wrap themselves around Rhys and Jack and take them back to Pandora’s surface.

But there was . . . something else. Like a wall. Some sort of security. It would emerge the second they set foot near the door, all teeth and rough edges or rocks and stone that would glow like the walls, like Rhys' wings. A vault guardian, meant to stop whoever had come from taking the precious treasures of the vault. It would gnash and claw and tear them apart before they could ever leave.

Rhys opened his mouth to tell Jack and that broke the spell. The panel under his hands went cold and when Rhys opened his eyes again he saw the glow of the console fading, reappearing in the wall, traveling up to the center of the ceiling. The crest of the dome lit up and a loud crack rang through the room.

“Kid,” Jack said, cautious, “what'd you do?”

“I have no idea,” Rhys said, voice straining as he watched the ceiling. Another loud crack rang through and the dome started to split, opening up at the top and breaking open over the entire room, like the shell of an egg splitting apart. The cracks ran through the glowing circuit marks down to the floor and the walls fell away, crashing with a thunderous boom that rang in Rhys' ears. His wings shook, slapping down on the ground and back up like they could launch him out of the room.

His eyes were still trained above them and as the ceiling fell out, Rhys could see a vault mark, glowing and blue, covering a bigger roof over their heads. The small dome had merely been a cage, and this was the real room, sweeping out hundreds of feet in either direction, the walls curving up and meeting in the center where the vault's exit glowed.

“There!” Rhys said, pointing. “The vault door!” But it was so high, Rhys had no idea how they would reach it.

His wings beat again and Rhys' mind stuttered, thinking of the canyon and how Jack had clung to him, how easily he'd been able to glide down the vault's tunnel. One good jump and he might be able to make it, to propel them both up and out.

“Where's the fucking treasure?” Jack snarled. “We’re gonna find what the hell those aliens were hiding in here.” He started striding across the floor, boots clicking loudly, hand on his gun as he snooped, a bloodhound on a scent.

Rhys almost screamed at him; the vault door was _right there_ and they could escape this evil maze of a place and Jack still couldn't get his head out of his own ass.

He didn't have time. Another boom echoed through the chamber and the floor shook beneath Rhys' feet, nearly tossing him. He waved his arms wildly to catch himself, looking up just in time to see the ceiling opening up again, and exactly what was coming out of it.


	8. Chapter 8

Around the vault's door, limbs started to appear, followed all too quickly by a narrow, glowing head. The monster's skin looked like it was made of rock, but beneath that it glowed blue and shimmered. Rhys could feel his wings resonating as the creature started to pour out from the ceiling, crawling along the wall as it slipped from the roof like a newly born worm. Its body was long, six legs carrying it down, a long, thin tail whipping back and forth. It was like a snake gone awry, colossal and big enough to swallow down an army of soldiers. Its eyes were miniature lightning storms and when it opened its maw, electric sparks jumped out of it.

“Now _that's_ what I'm talking about!” Jack crowed, pumping his fists in the air while the vault monster stared them down from its perch on the wall. “Rhysie, look at that thing, it's beautiful!”

“What?” Rhys shrank back even as his wings curled in front of him, shielding and sparking. “Jack, we have to get _away_ from that thing!”

“Rhysie, don't you see?” Jack grinned at him, his eyes wide and wild. “Wherever the hell that monster came from, that's where the treasure is! We just gotta kill it and get up there and we'll be golden!”

“You're out of your mind!” Rhys snapped, flinching as the vault monster took a step forward. Its feet were flat on the wall, perfectly attached like suction cups. The tail hung nearly to the floor every time it swung down; it could kill them with a simple flick.

“I'm a genius, kid, now come on!” Jack lifted his gun and grinned. “Get some of your powers working, I wanna bash this thing in fast!”

Rhys ignored him, backing up until he was against the wall. He could still feel the vault pulsing in him, a staccato beat, his eyes locked on the vault monster's face. It almost looked like a bird, long and curved with a threatening maw that looked like it could snap a building in half. But no bird had lightning in its eye, not even any birds that might live on Pandora, and the way the creature was looking at them made Rhys feel scrutinized, judged, measured up on some unknowable scale.

The monster reared back and let out a roar that shook the foundations of the room, vibrating through Rhys' body. His wings surged, up and out and beating down to launch him off the floor. Rhys yelped but he couldn't stop the way the monster's call rang in his ears like a church choir, wings surging until he was off the ground, the energy of the vault itself singing in his blood again, making every breath taste fresh and new.

Jack was on the ground with his gun, running at the vault monster. Even from above Rhys could tell it was a terrible idea. The monster broke eye contact with him to glare down at Jack, lightning jumping from its eye and hitting the ground, sparking around where Jack was running. Jack didn't seem bothered by the sudden strikes, pulling his SMG from his belt and firing a few rounds right at the vault monster's face.

The monster wasn't even bothered. Rhys sucked in a fast breath and mentally reached out to his wings, feeling them at the edges of his consciousness, and dove down. His tattoos burned like flames licking up his arm, swallowing half his body and twinging painfully down his spine every time his wings beat down. Rhys grit his teeth and pushed through it, arm seizing up at his side as he moved down, as close to the monster as he dared.

Jack was running around it like a fool. The monster was easily the size of several tanks, lumbering to the bottom of the room and coiling around to keep track of Jack. Its eyes were pure electricity and had no pupils but somehow Rhys could still tell when its gaze flicked between him and watching Jack run around.

Twisting down to get closer, Rhys called, “Jack! Just let me fly us up, I can get us out of here!”

If Jack heard him, he gave no indication, shooting the monster again. The strange rock clumps were in this room, too, giving him meager cover and glowing eerily. If Rhys touched them he might be able to learn more about the vault but between Jack and the monster there wasn't any time. He growled and looked up at the vault door, glowing and bright like a beacon, practically begging him to leave Jack behind and go through himself, to end this once and for all.

But his thoughts went to Pandora, the moment where he'd felt the entire planet living inside him. Everything here, from stalkers to bandits, was being attacked and it would die out without anyone to defend them. Pandora had sung through him and latched into his chest, digging its claws in and unwilling to let go.

“Damn it,” Rhys said, clucking his tongue and diving back down. The more he controlled his wings the easier it got, and it almost felt like he could move the way he wanted. He jerked when his wings suddenly zapped with electric strength, lightning flashing off the edges to strike whatever was nearest to him. The shocks landed hard on the floor of the vault room, small spikes in comparison to the strikes from the monster that danced around Jack.

Even if Rhys left Jack here, Hyperion would still exist. The programs scheduled to demolish local towns for the sake of mining, the people sent down to capture animals for experiments, the company branches that sprung up overnight in remote areas to let Hyperion sink its tendrils further into the planet, they would all still exist. Hyperion wouldn't die with Handsome Jack and Rhys needed to see that someone was there to protect Pandora.

Fiona and Sasha's faces flashed through his mind, their spitting anger at the idea that anyone would dare harm their planet no matter how hard it was to live on it.

“Jack, get the hell out!” Rhys snarled when he got close, dodging the lightning and the monster's feet slamming down on the floor as it slowly chased Jack, twisting its large body in the room and hissing low with a noise that sounded strangely like the pops of a bonfire engulfing wood. Rhys' wings beat hard and he tucked his arm in close, wincing at the fire that seared through his muscles, lightning tugging at his tattoos like they were a leash hooked over half his body. “You're not going to kill it by yourself!”

“No, I'm not!” Jack called back. Rhys blinked, shocked to hear his agreement. Jack ducked behind another clump of rocks and barely avoided getting zapped. He looked up, expectant. Rhys flew closer, nearly dropping to the floor when a lightning strike crashed down next to him and his wings jolted. He flew jerkily near Jack and held himself aloft, keeping mental tabs on where he could move to dodge the next one.

“So let me get us out!” Rhys snapped, trying not to lose focus.

“We need to control it,” Jack said, lifting his gun and peeking over the top of the rock pile. The monster had stopped moving but its lightning still landed around them, threatening to kill them both any second. “Rhys, the vault monsters are controlled by the vault keys.” He glared at the monster, bringing his gun up to eye it over the barrel. “You _are_ the key, Rhys! You gotta control it.”

Rhys' eyes went wide, mouth agape. Control _that_? The monster already looked like it wanted to murder them both. Rhys couldn't control something like _that_! He could barely control his own powers; the only reason he'd been flying for so long was because the vault was somehow charging him, keeping him energized so he didn't collapse from the effort.

The vault . . . was keeping him energized.

It clicked in Rhys' head. He looked at the door and the monster watching them with a staggering patience, electric eyes locked on them, claws digging into the floor so hard Rhys thought they might crack the purple stone, sharp edges like claymores in the ground.

He moved up and over the creature, as fast as he dared, his own eyes on it while it swiveled its head to watch him. Its skin, like rough stone, grated against itself every time the monster moved, the sound scraping through the room. Rhys stopped above it, halting sharply in the air, his legs dangling openly over its back.

Not a moment after he'd moved the monster turned back to Jack, hissing with the sound of a steam engine, lightning eyes narrowed as a thunder crack rolled with its step towards Jack, who darted and ducked behind another rock pile.

The second Rhys had moved the monster was on Jack again, its great maw opened and ready to swallow him whole. Rhys set his teeth and dove down, thinking of the vault symbol that had sent a shock through him, how his entire body had felt connected to Pandora in a single moment.

The room shook when the vault monster took its first step toward Jack again, lightning flashing like an indoor storm. Rhys braced himself and collided with its back, arms tucked around his head as he rolled over the monster's spine. His wings flashed and popped, keeping him aloft, sparks flying off the rocky skin. Rhys scrambled up, breathing hard, tipping back dangerously with the vault monster's lumbering walk. His wings kept him upright but every moment he struggled to stay standing, arms held out to keep a precarious balance.

Jack shouted something below but between the crashing steps of the monster and the thunder cracks that rolled out of its mouth Rhys couldn't hear anything. Instead he turned, moving as fast as he dared toward the monster's head, his steps shaky. He felt like a newborn giraffe, tumbling around and nearly falling every time he tried to move, but his wings still buzzed and it was enough, walking across the vault monster's thick, rigid spine toward the back of its head.

Those lightning eyes that somehow looked directly at Rhys and through him at the same time, charged and glowing bright, felt important. Rhys tried to breathe, every inhale lit from the static in the air, muscles twitching, his tattoos a beacon on his skin. His wings brushed over the monster's back when they swung out for balance and it was like actually touching it, feeling the rock and pulse of electricity through the tips of vibrating feathers. The monster was alien, made of lightning and stone, even more alive than Rhys was.

He reached the head and peeked over the side. Jack's face was red; somewhere he'd caught a blow and the blood was leaking down his face, over his mask. He didn't seem bothered, still hopping around the room, shooting at the monster every chance he got. He was stopping more often, though, running in spurts and hiding behind rocks and pillars to catch his breath. Another few minutes and he'd be too exhausted to move.

Rhys scurried over the monster's forehead, kicking off to turn himself around in midair and look at the vault monster's eyes. They swiveled to watch him, limbs coming to a shaking halt. Its thin tail smacked the ground and the crack made Rhys wince, hoping it didn’t shatter his eardrums. 

Jack's voice carried faintly over the noise, calling, “Make him listen to ya, kid!”

Scowling, Rhys moved closer, touching his feet gently over the monster's snout. It didn't move, eyes crossed to watch Rhys landing on its beak as carefully as he could, wings flapping behind him to keep half his weight off. “Hi,” he said, voice strained, hands flexing to work out his nerves.

The monster didn't move, didn't even blink.

“I'm Rhys,” he said slowly, settling down more, letting himself stand on the monster's face. “And I'm a siren. Apparently, uh, connected to this vault. A-And connected to you, too.”

No response, but Rhys hadn't expected any. He held his hand out, tattoos as bright as the lightning in the monster's eyes. The fires of his powers rushed through him, singing at the edges of his skin and making his blood burn through his heart. Jack was somewhere below, shouting uselessly, but in the clouded, stinging parts of his flesh and bone Rhys couldn't hear him, could only see the vault monster waiting for him.

He bent down, fingers spread, and touched the palm of his hand to the monster's face.

It was like hooking himself up to a car battery. Electricity zinged through him so fast Rhys didn't register the pain at first, and when it hit him it was an avalanche, crashing down into his chest and filling up his lungs. He might have screamed, he couldn't be sure.

Power wrapped around his arms like wires and yanked tight, pulling every muscle taut like a crescendo, slamming him down full body onto the monster's face. He grasped, clutching, unable to see where the hand holds were; everything in front of his eyes was white fire, hot and uncontrollable and boiling him alive, engulfing his legs and hands and face. He tried to scream again but all that came out was crackling electricity that stung behind his teeth, crashing around his ears in a cacophony.

A heavy weight crashed into his back, rocks and water and ice and desert, and Rhys knew what it was immediately. Pandora, the entire planet rocking into his shoulders, butting up against his lungs and competing with his heart for space in his chest. Stalkers opened their mouths and hissed low at the threat of an enemy of their territory; bandits loaded their guns; rakks dive bombed every car they saw; the desert winds howled and the icy rocks tumbled over glaciers with each crack, the planet breaking open slowly to cry for help and cry out in pain, a ringing shriek like church bells crashing into the inside of his skull.

Electric life ran through it all, a circuit, carving its way across flesh and bone and rock to bury in any creature it came across, their nerves pulsing and limbs shaking with the presence of _life_. And it was here, too, in this monster. It wasn't a monster, not really; it watched over the life on Pandora, startled earthquakes and typhoons out of the planet when creatures cried out in too much distress, when the humans here were dying by the thousands.

But it couldn't stop Hyperion, an entire company with metal claws and mining contracts and eridium that disappeared from the planet by the truckloads. Pandora could only spin through space for so long with a leech sucking at its skin.

Rhys grit his teeth and forced himself to pry off the monster, to sit up and look into its eyes again. The weight of the planet still sat on his shoulders, jagged mountains digging into his skin, sand burying itself at the corners of his eyes to force tears to well up. Rhys rubbed at them automatically but the feeling remained, shifting uncomfortably within him along with the electric flame that kept his wings alight, his body humming in tune to Pandora.

“I see,” he said slowly. The monster was standing still, lightning still crackling around it. “You don't know how to get rid of them,” he said, smiling faintly. “You poor thing.”

It opened its mouth and thunder rolled across the room, echoing off the walls. Rhys nodded; he had no idea what it had said, but he could feel the sense of its emotions pulling at the edges of his ribcage, swelling up with the weight of the planet.

All of Pandora was losing out to Hyperion. It would be sucked dry and left as a husk within a few decades, maybe longer; Handsome Jack had already eroded so much life with just his own work, and other companies would follow in his footsteps long after he was gone. If someone didn't end it, everyone on the surface would die out or end up living in misery.

Rhys was connected to the vault, and to this monster. Jack had brought him to the one place where he was the most dangerous.

Standing again, Rhys turned and looked down at Jack, crowded against one wall and watching Rhys with an intense gaze. Rhys flexed his hands, tattoos like a brand on his skin, freshly burned in and never fading. “Jack!” he snapped.

Jack brightened, relaxing when the monster didn't keep lumbering towards him. “Did you finally get it, kiddo? Let's get the treasure and get the hell out of here!”

In the back of his mind, in the back of the monster's mind, Rhys knew there was a treasure, a hidden cache the eridians had placed here in hopes of protecting it. It wasn't the important part now, though.

“We're not getting the treasure!” he said. “In fact we're not getting anything from here anymore. We need to leave.”

Jack's smile dropped, quickly turning to a feral scowl. “The hell are you talking about, cupcake? The whole reason we came here–”

“The whole _reason_ we came here is because you ordered me to!” Electricity licked its way up Rhys legs, engulfing the left half of his body, plunging him into fire. “You found out about my powers and you _forced_ me to show off, like it was some kind of game! And then you brought me here to track down this fucking vault with a gun to my head!”

Jack stuttered and Rhys moved down the monster's face, steps slow and measured, standing on the edge. Around the room lightning still crackled, flashing every time it struck the floor. Jack didn't move, didn't blink, his eyes trained on Rhys.

“I'm not your pet,” Rhys spat, kneeling down, letting his wings rise up behind him like great flags, sweeping down to push him off, up, and over, floating gently to the ground. The lightning struck everywhere, even inches from his body, but he knew it wouldn't hurt him. His only thought was Jack, walking slowly up to him. “I'm not your cupcake,” he continued. “Or your pumpkin or your kiddo. My name is _Rhys_ , not Rhysie. And I don't care how powerful of a siren I turn out to be because as far as you're concerned, I'm a person.” He stopped short of Jack, looking down at him, and this time the height difference didn't just feel like a convenience, a happenstance of their stature, it felt _real_. Rhys loomed over him with electric wings spread wide, tattoos glowing, his metal arm whirring hard and ready to slap Jack right across the face.

He didn't, though; just waited for a response.

Jack sneered, eyes narrowing. “What, now that you've figured your powers out you're gonna go all high and mighty on me? Pretend to be queen of the vault? That's a fucking joke. You couldn't even find the vault to start with. You had to make it in here by _accident_.”

Rhys snarled, teeth bared. Lightning cracked behind Jack. He swore and jumped away. “What the fuck?! If you want to kill me then just get it over with for fuck's sake! I'm not here to stand around waiting like a chump!”

Pandora's echo was soft in Rhys' mind, bouncing off the back of the monster's head and into Rhys'. A plea for help, a cry of desperation meant to ring out pity or mercy, to beg for release in any form. Hyperion was sinking drills and teeth into the planet's surface and ruining the lives of its inhabitants one settlement at a time. It would continue to do so long after Jack's death.

“No,” Rhys said, shaking his head. “I don't think being dead is going to slow down your ambition. You'll still exist, somehow. In Hyperion's logos and mottos, in its goals. You've tainted too much of it to just disappear like that.”

Jack raised a brow, smiling cautiously. “Well yeah, of course. What'd you expect from building an empire, kid?”

“I expected you to be a hero,” Rhys said, tone hard, edged. “Not a goddamn mass murderer.”

Jack snorted and rolled his eyes, visibly relaxing. “Have you heard anything about how I got to be where I am? Do you even know me? I'm Handsome fucking Jack, Rhysie. I go big or go home, and on Pandora, there is _no_ going home.”

Rhys grit his teeth, fists clenched at his side. He didn't get it. Even with lightning striking all around him and a giant monster staring him in the face, Jack didn't get it. He never would.

“No remorse?” he asked, trying one last time.

“For what? Doing my best to improve this hellhole? Uh, no?”

“Oh my god,” Rhys said flatly, stepping back, wings curling over his shoulders. “You really _don't_ care. You think this is all some sick, twisted game. Jack, you saw the people in those towns. You've seen the bandits. How can you . . .? Hyperion has _changed_ Pandora, Jack.”

Jack shifted, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I'm changing it for the better, Rhys. That's why we have to find these vaults in the first place.”

“The _vault_ is for your own precious personal bank!”

“To _fix_ Pandora, numb nuts!”

“That's it!” Rhys' anger flared and his wings shot out, spreading wide. He knelt and jumped, letting them carry him up until he was level with the vault monster's face, staring down at Jack. “You clearly don't care. You haven't listened to a word the people say about what they need.”

“And you have?” Jack challenged.

Rhys' face fell and he ducked his head. “No,” he admitted, swallowing a lump in his throat. He thought of Fiona and Sasha, hissing and spitting at him when they'd first met, shifting into gentle touches and voices when they found out what was really going on, what Jack was doing. Not everyone on Pandora was like them.

But if there were others, people whose lives had been destroyed . . .

Rhys grit his teeth, legs curling up near his body, bringing himself up to rest back on the monster's snout. It opened its great mouth, low thunder rumbling through the room. “I haven't listened to anyone yet, but that's where we're different, Jack. I'm _going_ to listen to them, and I'm gonna help them the way they need to be helped. I have . . . no idea what their lives are really like. But I intend to find out. And I'm not going to let you stop me.”

He bent down, fast, limbs loose, and smacked his hand down on the monster's mouth. His tattoos flared like a wildfire over his skin, glowing bright enough to blind him, and he dug his fingers into the cracks on the monster's rocky skin. Its core power rocked through him, vibrating along his skin and wrapping tight over his nerves, over his spine, rooting deep within him and yanking hard, like it was attached to his very soul. Rhys could see the path of each lightning strike, the movement of the sound waves when it roared, the way its limbs held its heavy body to the ground, how easily they could leap with the energy of the vault swirling around them, a cloud of alien power that was embedded in the walls, the floor, the eridium that had exploded over the planet.

“Burn in hell, Jack,” he muttered, ECHOeye flickering on, tracking the paths of the lightning bolts, highlighting Jack's body, so small from where he knelt. It burned in his eye socket, a song of destruction coursing through him. Rhys focused it on his hand, his wings, curling up and shifting until his legs were under him.

Jack was yelling and Rhys could feel the gunshots shooting past him, but it didn't matter. The vault's exit was open. He launched himself up; the monster shifted under him, lifting its head, carrying him higher. He let his wings carry him the rest of the way, flapping with electric force and charging the air around him.

As soon as Rhys' feet lifted from the monster’s face, it crashed back down, roaring long and loud with the sound of clashing storms and crackling electricity that bounced off the walls, ringing in Rhys' ears.


	9. Chapter 9

The vault exit felt the same as the doorway, rippling over Rhys’ body when he touched it. He closed his eyes and held his breath, letting his wings push him through. The difference was almost immediate; when his body came through his wings suddenly felt twice as heavy, his body limp, and he struggled to fight his way through, entire body like a lead weight without the vault to support him.

He tumbled out, crashing onto the ground. Rough rocks scratched his face and ice stung his hands, biting into the fingers. His pants had torn at the knees and his wings had stopped glowing with fresh energy, resting dully on the ground. Rhys could feel the edges of the rocks on his wings, electricity sparking off the edges and running currents through the ground.

He breathed out hard, a long, soft pain that stretched from his lungs to his ribcage, aching through him. Rhys struggled to sit up. His knees bled. He ignored the sharp pain and stood, shaking, hands wrapped around himself, wings shivering for a long moment and dissolving completely.

The fatigue hit him like a train, crashing down on his head and shaking through the rest of him. He gasped and breathed in as much as he could; just standing was suddenly a herculean effort. “Fuck,” he muttered. There was something he was forgetting . . .

The vault door.

It was gone. He wasn't even in the cave; he'd landed on top of the gorge, not far from the camp. In the distance he could see figures, and when Rhys looked they seemed to finally notice him, too.

There were shouts that sounded like eardrum shattering screeches through Rhys' exhausted filter. He covered his ears, groaning, and even own breathing made his chest hurt. He struggled to open his eyes again and saw people running at him, people from the expedition team. Fiona and Sasha were among the crowd. They were the only vaguely familiar faces among all the Hyperion employees and he let himself focus on them while his body swayed on the ground.

“Rhys!” Fiona broke through, stopping in front of him. “Where the hell did you come from? We've been trying to find you for hours!” Her words were muffled but Rhys could make them out, blinking at her.

“Hours?” Rhys coughed at the roughness in his voice and slowly lifted his hands from his ears. “Is that all?”

“Is that . . .” Her brow furrowed but before she could say anything else, someone else barged to the front of the group. A woman, dark skinned and lithe, one of the geologists who'd been in charge of sampling the terrain and looking for strange or sudden changes that might have indicated a vault's technology running through Pandora.

She moved close, her eyes wide. “We thought you'd fallen in the gorge! Where's Jack? He called us, we have people trying to open up the cavern entrance. How did you _get_ here?”

“That's . . .” Rhys blinked, looking at the mass of people crowding around him, closing in like a massive wall. “Okay, first, it's a long story, and second?” He put both arms out to the side, forcing people to step away. “I need some space so I can make a goddamn phone call.”

They all blinked at him, staring. Rhys kept glaring until they moved away and he took the moment to breathe, lungs still aching sharply. Turning sharply on his heel, he brought up his palm computer and dialed home, walking far away from the team.

Yvette picked up on the first ring, her scowling face appearing in small pixels on the hologram. “Rhys?! You haven't called in two days! What the hell!”

“Hey, Yvette,” he said, smiling faintly. He was glad to use the phone in his arm; the one they'd installed in his eye didn't have video and it was nice to see Yvette, even if she was glaring at him. “Are you at home?”

“We’re at the apartment, worried sick! Did something happen?”

“Well . . . yeah.” Rhys scratched the back of his head, tattoos still burning faintly. He hadn't realized until just now that somewhere in the fight his sleeve had been torn and he could see the marks, pale blue, running up and down his arm. “It's a bit of a long story, actually.”

“Rhys?!” Vaughn's head poked into the video feed and Rhys laughed, relief washing through his chest like a fresh wave of air. He sat down on the nearest spot that wasn't covered in ice and gave them the shortest version of the story that he could.

The team left him alone, out of hearing range. No one asked questions about Jack, and though plenty of them stared while Rhys made his call, no one said anything. Without Jack to snarl out orders, the group was confused and hesitant, moving like small animals that had been blinded in the sun. They were two steps of confusion from bumping into the cars parked around the gorge.

Rhys relayed everything, from jumping in the gorge, to flying to the cavern, to the events in the vault. Yvette and Vaughn both gasped when he told them he'd left Jack in there, presumably to die with the vault monster. Rhys didn't even skip over the words, strangely at peace.

Instead, it was speaking about the vault monster that had him hesitating. He'd used its power to jump out of the vault and now it was just . . . sitting there. And it felt like Rhys wasn't done yet. His powers still jolted quietly through him, making his fingers itch, his back ache. There was something left to be done, though he couldn't tell what.

He ended the call with a promise to call again that evening with another update. Vaughn begged him to be safe and Yvette warned him not to count Jack as dead until they saw the body. He'd been presumed dead before and that hadn't worked out for anyone.

When he finally got up from the ground a shiver ran down down his body, clothes stiff with the cold. He rubbed his arms over his middle for friction and dug down into himself for a little more electricity, a little more heat, to buzz down his arm and wrap around him, warding off the chill. It sent another wave of exhaustion through him, his whole body feeling like a lead weight. Rhys breathed hard through it and stumbled his way back to the camp.

People were still buzzing around, looking over the edge of the gorge, scanning the horizon, calling Jack's ECHO. A team was trying to get into the cavern and it was probably about time Rhys told them everything so they could stop scrambling.

“Hey,” he said, his tongue heavy in his mouth. A few people looked up at him but others were still busy and couldn't afford to spare their attention. Rhys stood for a long moment and said the first thing that came to his mind. “Could I . . . have some soup or something? And a blanket?”

Some of them raised brows but an older man got up and went to the cooking station, picking out a bowl and pouring whatever they'd had for lunch into it. A woman fetched him a blanket from one of the tents. Rhys took it from her gratefully and sat down where the ground had been cleared of ice and covered in a tarp, sighing when the man gave him a bowl of stew, still warm, and started to slurp it down.

Fiona and Sasha walked up and sat down near him, a blanket spread under them. “Rhys,” Sasha said gently. “Everyone here is wondering about Jack. I think it's about time you told us what happened.”

Rhys eyed her over his bowl of stew, wicked words on his mind. The whole ordeal still felt . . . unreal. He had no idea how to explain his sudden shift of power, the vault monster, the technology, any of it. No one would believe him.

“It's a long story,” he said, finally noticing the feeling coming back to his lips after the hour long call.

“I think we all have plenty of time,” Fiona said, leaning back on the blanket. “But you should probably start with what happened to Handsome Jack.” There was an edge to her voice and Rhys knew anything less than death would be bad news to her and her sister. Her eyes were hard, waiting, ready to give up again with yet another story about how Handsome Jack had escaped near death.

She'd be pleased, then.

“All right,” he said slowly, sighing. Louder, he said, “Hey, everybody? If you want to know what happened to Jack, you better get close. This story's . . . kind of long. And complicated.”

Everyone in the camp looked at him then, some curious, some disbelieving, but Jack wasn't here and they had no one to defer to so, slowly, one by one, they all walked closer to him and sat down on various blankets and chairs, watching him expectantly. Rhys ignored their stares and started his story carefully. “First of all, you might not believe any of this.”

It didn't look like a lot of them would, at first. Rhys breathed deep and launched into his story, starting with the gorge. Of course they believed that part, and they had records of calls with Jack to prove everything up until the vault.

After that, though . . .

There were different reactions from everyone. Shock, disbelief, awe. Rhys felt better after the soup and he used the last of what energy he had left to make his tattoos glow bright, to prove his powers to anyone who hadn't seen them yet. Some of the biologists on the team insisted he go back into the gorge and try to activate the door again. Rhys flinched at the suggestion.

Fiona seemed to recognize his feelings and quickly shooed them away, huddling closer to him. Rhys gave her a wane smile and continued with the story.

The vault monster seemed to be the hardest part to believe. Rhys being a siren and unlocking various parts of the vault? They had precedent for that, stories of sirens and how they worked with eridian technology. But the vault monsters were legends, things they'd only heard about from Jack himself or tales of the vault hunters. It was a lot less credible coming from Rhys' mouth. 

“And you don't have any real evidence of this?” Sasha asked. Even she didn’t look like she believed him.

Rhys shook his head, automatically activating his ECHO eye and pointing to the port in his temple. “Well my ECHO couldn't identify anything inside the vault so I assume we don't have records for that kind of thing, and–” He stopped, eyes going wide.

“What?” Sasha asked but Rhys was already parsing through menus, staring through the crowd at nothing as he sorted through the data in his ECHO. He'd seen the yellow glow around Jack, the lit up indicators. He'd turned it on right when they'd come in, started _recording_ –

“I have video,” he said suddenly, blinking a few times and looking up at the crowd of expectant faces. “I recorded stuff, in case we needed video. I had to have proof I'd been in a vault, I didn't even think . . ." Rhys brought his hand up and turned on the palm computer.

Rhys fed the footage from the vault into it, bringing it up on the screen. Everyone around him crouched down to see, vying for space and going suddenly still when the footage started. It was jerky and fast, moving between the floor of the vault and Jack, and up suddenly as Rhys vaulted himself away. There were glimpses of the monster, a tail or a foot, and the massive lightning strikes that covered the entire feed with light.

As far as video feed went it was utterly useless, but it showed everyone what they needed to see: proof of the vault monster, and Jack. 

Rhys waited for them to stop whispering amongst themselves, closing the video. “That was the last time I saw Handsome Jack. As far as I know, he's still in there.”

A chorus of shouts came at him, most of them angry, some astonished, all asking why Rhys had done it, how _could_ he have, he'd left their greatest CEO to die in a vault! Rhys flinched away, ducking his head. A strong arm wrapped around his shoulder.

“Enough!” Fiona snarled. “He was stuck! Rhys wouldn't have done anything he didn't need to do to survive. Don't tell me any of you wouldn't have left Jack if you had the chance to leave and couldn't take him with you?”

That shut quite a few people up. Fiona's eyes narrowed, daring them to say anything else.

Rhys lifted his head. “I didn't leave Jack on purpose,” he lied, licking his lips. “All he wanted was the vault treasure, he didn't care about protecting our lives. I left him because he didn't want to leave.” That part, at least, was true, and as he said it he could see contrition and reluctant agreement passing over their faces. No one could deny that Jack was a greedy fool, willing to do anything for money and alien technology.

“So where does that leave us?” one woman muttered, scratching her head.

“Minus one CEO,” another person said, scoffing. “Helios is going to be in absolute chaos when we get back. _All_ of Hyperion is.”

“You can't go back into the vault and get him?”

The suggestion was thrown out wildly and it made everyone pause again, looking at him. Rhys swallowed and turned his head away, saying, “Do you want to risk the vault monster escaping and killing us all?”

If he stepped back into the vault and called the monster to him, Rhys had no doubt it would do the same as it had before, deferring to him and keeping him from harm's way. But they didn't need to know that; no one needed to know that.

Eventually they left him alone, shocked by the news of their boss' imminent death. Rhys’ tattoos had long since stopped glowing and he could feel his eyelids drooping with his exhaustion, begging him to go to sleep. He fought it for a while, waiting for the expedition team to go to their tents and turn in for the night. Or day, rather, because the sun was still up, but they were all still operating on human sleep schedules and even the ninety hour days couldn't stop them.

Fiona and Sasha stayed with him until almost everyone was gone. Fiona eventually took her arm off Rhys but shot a look at anyone who got close to him again. Rhys let her play guard dog as the camp settled down. When everyone was gone, he swiveled his head to look at her, feeling like a ragdoll with how heavily it hung on his shoulders. “What was that?” he asked, quiet with fatigue.

“What?”

“This whole . . .” Rhys gestured outward with his arms, like a shield. “Thing.”

“You mean protecting you from the vultures?” Sasha asked, leaning over the raise a brow at him. “We're being _nice_. You might want to try it sometime. You're welcome, by the way.”

Rhys sighed and leaned back, ready to collapse under the sun that still shone far too bright for his brain to be able to handle right at that moment. “But I'm Hyperion. I get it if you were like, protesting Jack or whatever, but he's not here anymore. You don't have to be nice if you don't want to.”

Fiona scoffed, wrinkling her nose. “Wow, I'm so glad to hear how grateful you are. Showing up Jack wasn't why we did this, asshole.” She kicked Rhys' heel with her boot. “Don't you think we know a victim when we see one? You're exhausted and you did all that vault crap, we kind of expected you to need someone on your side. No one else here is.” She turned to glance at the tents where the expedition team was sleeping. Or rather, trying to sleep. Rhys could hear some of them talking animatedly through the thin tarps.

“Well,” Rhys paused, licking his lips. They felt dry, too dry. How long since he'd last had some water? The stew had helped but it sat heavy in his belly and he wanted some clear water to wash it down with. There were canteens and water jugs in the supply truck but he didn't feel like going to get any, and he'd left his bag in his tent across camp.

His eyelids were getting heavier. Rhys blinked, trying to stay awake.

“I wonder what Hyperion is going to do now,” Sasha said, glancing around the camp. “You killed their leader.”

“Cut off a hydra's head, it'll grow more,” Fiona said tartly, shrugging. “Someone else will step up to the plate who's even worse.”

Rhys swallowed and shook his head. In his mind, Jack's eyes, locked on nothing but his own vanity and greed as he stared at the vault monster, flashed like lightning. “No, I don't think anyone could be as bad as Jack.”

For a few minutes they sat together, a weird misfit band. Rhys didn't even know what Fiona and Sasha _did_ for a living. They'd been at the bar in that one town, but then they'd showed up spying on their team. They hadn’t mentioned their own life much beyond that.

Although they hadn’t had much time to talk, running around on Pandora with Jack hovering over Rhys like a dog.  

He couldn't ask questions about it; his eyelids kept falling down and his brain was itching, begging for sleep. He yawned and stood shakily, looking down at them. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “It's nice to know someone is willing to help me out.”

“Hey,” Fiona said, waving a hand. “You're the one that did all that freaky siren stuff. It was fun to watch, even if all the cool vault stuff happened without us.”

“Get some sleep,” Sasha urged. “We'll still be around when you wake up.”

Rhys blinked slowly and smiled. That was right; without Jack here there was no real authority keeping Sasha and Fiona around. Even if someone in camp had tried to pull a gun on them in a vain attempt to keep Jack's wishes alive, Rhys had a feeling they could have gotten away, especially with the dazed feeling settling over the entire camp as everyone slowly came to terms with the news about Jack's fate. They both could have left, but they'd stayed anyway.

The tent was a lot bigger without Jack in it. Rhys closed the flap and spent a moment staring at the center where Jack's fluffy, elegant travel bed lay, and the corner where he'd managed to tuck himself in. For half a second he considered taking Jack's bed; it was probably a hell of a lot more comfortable and he could certainly use every edge he could get for a deep sleep.

But he didn't, sitting on his own bed and kicking his shoes off, dragging the sleeping bag up around his shoulders and collapsing on his lone, flat pillow.

 

* * *

 

Rhys woke up with a headache.

It pounded annoyingly behind his eyes and he spent a good few minutes lying in his sleeping bag, rubbing at his temples to diminish the pain. He grabbed his canteen from his bag and took several long swallows, letting it quench his thirst, smacking his lips. It was like he'd been in a desert, throat scratching painfully. He sighed, capping the water and standing.

Fatigue still plagued him, aching in his shoulders and down his arms. Rhys stretched them out and bent his legs a few times, getting the soreness out of his knees. The ache bit at his muscles and made him groan, stretching his hands high above his head to work out the worst of it.

Outside, the rest of the camp was packed up, trucks starting their engines to get ready to leave. Fiona and Sasha were near the center, holding plates, and when Rhys walked up he saw that they had omelets and Fiona was holding one out to him.

“Hey,” Rhys said, taking it gratefully. He stuffed his face and watched the camp pack up. “Are we going back?” he guessed, eyes flicking to the gorge's edge. “I thought they . . .”

“We all saw that video,” Sasha said. “They tried to get in the vault as soon as you disappeared into it with no luck. Unless you unlock it again I don't think any of them will be able to get in.”

“They're all too scared of your weird powers to try shooting you,” Fiona added helpfully through a mouthful of egg. “They think you'll reverse the bullets or something.”

Rhys snorted, and then thought about that, fork pressed against his lips. “I actually have no idea whether I could do that or not.”

That got a laugh out of them both and Rhys tried to smile with them, but his eyes kept going back to the gorge, thinking of the vault door. He'd opened it entirely by accident, without conscious thought. If he wanted to he could dive in again, unlock the puzzles and find whatever was left of Jack. It would end it, give him some closure.

But the thought of Jack possibly being alive, still fighting the vault monster, had his hands clutching tight around his plate, stomach churning at the idea of facing him down a second time.

Everyone loaded up the cars and got ready to head out, Rhys' tent the last to get packed away. He lingered near the gorge by himself, pacing a few times, thinking of the small cavern and the glowing vault door. When a hand clamped down hard on his shoulder he startled, jerking out of their grasp.

It was one of the guards, the woman that had watched him on their first day in that lonely first town. “We couldn't break through the ice to make the entrance bigger,” she said, looking over the edge. “We didn't feel safe only sending one person in at a time. There weren't any readings of an active vault door, either way. I think it closed as soon as you and Jack went through.”

“Oh.” Rhys breathed out, forcing his shoulders to relax. “Yeah, I . . . I don't know if I could open it again.”

“Everyone's terrified,” she said, sighing. “We lost Handsome Jack and we have a siren. You can't blame us for being a little unsure. But the first thing we need to do is go back to Helios.” She lifted her gun, waving it toward the caravan. “Come on, Rhys.”

He looked over the edge of the gorge one last time, nodding. “Yeah, sure.”

Melissa was her name, his brain sleepily supplied as they walked back. She had her afro of hair tied back tight against her head and she walked like she was ready to shoot the next thing that moved the wrong way. She guided Rhys to the caravan Fiona and Sasha were in and rode along on the top of it, gun held up, eyes scanning the horizon for threats. She was probably one of the few that knew Rhys wasn't really a threat.

They rode back to their landing spot. Rhys could see the blinker on the map of the car's dashboard, their icon slowly blinking across Pandora’s surface. Sasha and Fiona chatted idly, talking about how long it would take them to get home once the Hyperion creeps left, Fiona quietly assuring Rhys that they didn't mean _him_. Rhys listened, looking out the window to watch Pandora pass by.

They didn't reach the landing spot the first day, and Rhys spent the next night alone again in his own tent, sleeping in his terrible sleeping bag and clutching his backpack close. They left again the next morning and a pattern was established, moving until the drivers couldn't trade shifts anymore and they had to rest, packing up camp as soon as everyone had slept well.

It was nice to not have to stop every other day to check out a rumor or investigate something suspicious on the land, and what had been three weeks of running around Pandora turned into a week of straight travel, coming to the landing spot much faster than Rhys had anticipated. Their ships were being readied; it would only be a couple hours until they were ready to leave. 

When the cars had all stopped and everyone was preparing to go home, piling bags together and destructing the vehicles, Rhys started pacing again. His legs itched, like someone had stuck branches up his pant legs, and he wrapped his arms tight around his middle, humming low in his throat. The feeling had started a couple days into their travel and refused to leave him, sitting heavy and uncomfortable at the base of his skull. He scratched the back of his head but it didn't help, like trying to remove a bandage by pouring cold water over it.

Sasha and Fiona got away from the group as soon as possible. A few of the guards eyed them but Rhys shot them a glare and followed the two, standing with them a distance away from the ships, where people were calling Helios to talk about procedures for their arrival. Rhys imagined someone was supposed to be in charge of telling the people on Helios what had happened to Jack, and he had a funny feeling it was going to fall on his shoulders pretty quickly.

“Are you leaving?” he said, to distract himself, looking at Fiona and Sasha.

Sasha put a hand on her hip, nodding firmly. “We need to get back. August probably tore up the whole town when we didn't get back home on schedule.”

Fiona rolled her eyes, arms crossed in front of her chest. “Do we really care what he thinks? I'm worried about Felix. Every time I tried to call and tell him we were doing fine he started freaking out and talking about needing to slip away from the con.”

“The con?” Rhys looked between them both, brow furrowed. “Wait, are you– are you two _thieves_?”

“Yes?” Sasha said, like it was obvious. “Did you think we followed Jack's team for fun and games?”

“I thought . . . I thought you were trying to take down Hyperion or something.”

They blinked at him, and burst out laughing. Rhys flinched, backing away. Fiona was bent double, hat tipping dangerously far over her head, and Sasha’s shoulders were shaking. Fiona looked up, hat knocked almost over her eyes. “Us? Yeah, sure, Rhys, we're gonna stop Hyperion all by ourselves.” She snickered and straightened out, wiping a tear from the corner of her eyes. “If _that_ was the plan we would've brought more people. And bombs.”

Sasha put a hand on Rhys' shoulder, patting gently. “We're just small time con artists, Rhys. We do what we have to to survive, like everyone else on Pandora.”

“R-Right.” Rhys tried to relax. Sasha dropped her hand, still laughing quietly. Rhys swallowed and ducked his head, hands clenched at his side. Thieves, con artists. They did what they had to do to survive.

That shouldn't be how it is. No one deserved to be forced to steal.

The hot feeling still itched at the back of his head and Rhys excused himself to take a walk. He called Yvette and Vaughn, telling them he was almost on his way home. They sounded relieved and tired, and Yvette had bad circles under her eyes. Vaughn kept blinking fast, like he was trying to keep himself awake. Rhys wondered how many days they'd spent without sleep, how many nights they'd woken up to his calls because the Pandoran schedules were off and Rhys was sitting awake in a car thinking of Handsome Jack's face as he'd sailed up to the vault's exit.

The team’s excitement ratched to palpable levels the closer they were to finally leaving. Rhys expected Sasha and Fiona to ditch but they stuck around, and it took an embarrassingly long time for Rhys to realize that they were sticking around for his sake. Fiona kept snapping at people who started walking toward him and they hovered protectively, like mother cougars. Rhys blushed and his stomach churned awkwardly at the attention.

After what felt like years someone yelled, opening the bay doors of their ships and directing people inside to launch back off the planet. People didn’t hesitate to rush in, all the cars destructed, equipment packed away.

Rhys’ stomach felt like an empty void and his head was like a rock dipped in hot lava, still solid but rapidly burning away.

Leaving was like flipping a switch; everyone that had been quiet was now talking animatedly, making their way to the ships, handing bags off to crew members to have them stored as they started piling in.

Rhys' fingers itched and his back was starting to ache.

“I suppose this means goodbye?” Fiona was next to him and Rhys startled, eyes wide. She leaned back, raising a brow. “Whoa, are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah, I just, um.” He bit his lip, staring at the ships. It was almost like his _soul_ hurt, his chest aching at the edges like teeth sawing into his ribcage, and he could feel his back itching, wings twitching underneath the skin. It was silly, his wings didn't exist as corporeal objects, but he still felt it distinctly, urging him to move away, to _run_.

He thought of the vault monsters and the visions of Pandora, how in a single moment he'd felt the presence of the entire planet; how much Pandora would continue to suffer as Hyperion tried to crush it under its heel, destroying everything in the name of Handsome Jack.

The thought of getting on that ship made Rhys want to vomit.

He backed away from it, fingers flexing, and he could feel the dull pulse of his tattoos getting warmer.

“Rhys?” Fiona asked. Sasha was walking up to them and she eyed him too, tilting her head.

“I'm not going,” Rhys said faintly. He didn't break, not yet, watching the pair of them. “You're going back to your town, right? Back to August?”

Sasha glanced at Fiona, hesitating. “That's the plan.”

“Take me with you.”

They both snapped their gazes to him, eyes wide with disbelief. “Take you– Rhys, don't you have to go back to Helios?” Sasha asked, settling her hands on her hips. “As much as we hate that place, I'm pretty sure it needs someone to take over after Handsome Jack's kicked the bucket.”

Rhys shook his head before she finished speaking, putting a hand over his chest where his heart was jackhammering. “Someone's going to take over no matter what,” he said. “They're going to keep pursuing Jack's dream, trying to change Pandora until it's not recognizable anymore.” He swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. “If I leave I might never see Pandora the same way again.”

“What?” Fiona's eyes narrowed, doubtful. “Rhys, you only got here for the first time a few weeks ago, what's with all this sentimentality?”

“I–” Rhys stopped and sighed. He'd told the story of the vault but he'd left out the biggest detail, the way he'd seen and felt Pandora and how the life on the planet had resonated in his bones and sung a chorus in his blood.

It would have been strange in itself, but Fiona was right, he hadn't been on Pandora very long. Even knowing the planet the way he did, he couldn't possibly understand it the same way as someone who'd lived on it their whole lives.

Sasha stepped around Fiona, walking up to him slowly with a hand up, like she was approaching a scared animal. “Rhys,” she said gently. “Is this because of what we said to you?”

“It's– a lot of stuff,” Rhys said, jumping around the truth. “I never saw Pandora before all this, I never knew what went on here.”

“And I appreciate you being concerned,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But we all know how Handsome Jack started this crusade. The propaganda never stops; he came to Pandora and saw the bandits and the way life lived here and decided it was wrong. He got overprotective of something that didn't belong to him. If you do the same thing you might end up overstepping your bounds.”

Rhys looked up sharply, brow furrowed. “But–”

She shook her head fast. “No 'buts.' Rhys, do you even know what town we're from?”

“Uh . . .” He blinked a few times, staring.

Sasha smiled. “We're from Hollow Point. But that's not even where the bar and August were. You don't know anything about us or our lives that we didn't tell you or that you didn't see in the last few weeks. You don't know us. You don't know anyone on Pandora.”

Rhys opened his mouth, ready to tell her about the vault and the monster and his wings and the pain he'd felt, the cry of every creature on this planet that needed help.

Her eyes were open, honest. She was trying to make him understand.

And she was right.

As much as Rhys understood Pandora on a physical level, as much as the cry of the vault monster had resonated through him like a church bell, it wasn't the same as getting to know people on the planet, living here with them.

But Rhys couldn't do anything about Helios and Hyperion if he spent his time trying to live on Pandora, either.

“Go back to Helios, Rhys,” Fiona said, patting his cheek gently. “At the very least Handsome Jack is gone. You can't be _that_ much of Hyperion scum if you got rid of him. We'll manage down here.”

“If I come back,” Rhys started saying, before he could think better of it, “if I come back here, would I be able to see you two? Maybe find out more about Pandora from the source?”

“Visitors are welcome,” Sasha said, grinning. She gave Rhys a clap on the back and looked back at the ships that were still being loaded. A few people were watching them, expressions unreadable from the distance. “You better leave, though. I think ‘the siren who killed Handsome Jack’ is going to have a few problems with Hyperion.”

“Like you said.” Rhys lifted up his flesh arm, willing the tattoos to glow, iridescent and bright on his pale skin. “They have no idea _what_ I'm capable of. If I get my way I'm gonna have them too scared to accuse me of murder.”

“Atta boy.” Fiona grinned and punched his shoulder lightly. “Come down and visit, we'll give you a proper tour of the planet that doesn't include hunting down monstrous creatures and giant vaults.”

“Yeah.” Rhys smiled and rubbed his sore shoulder, the pain fading quickly as his tattoos glowed fiercely on his arm.

The captain holding the door for the last ship glared at Rhys, but Rhys just glared right back, strolling onto the ship. The door closed heavily behind him, clicking into place and locking with a loud thunk. Rhys took his seat and looked out the nearest window, but he couldn't see Fiona or Sasha from where he was; they'd probably high-tailed it as soon as Rhys had started walking away.

With luck, he would be able to come back. He could still feel the echo of the planet's call in his chest and he wanted to feel it again, to know he could help. But right now the chaos would be on Helios and it was Rhys' turn to manage everything.

No one spoke on the ride back. The captain steered them and the crew members shared whispers but no one looked directly at Rhys, jolting whenever he accidentally caught their eye. Though it exhausted him to do so, Rhys kept his tattoos lit up, showing under his torn shirt sleeves. If anyone said anything, he was ready to let his wings explode in a cloud of electric volts.

When they landed Rhys was the first to leave the ship. Someone wrapped arms tight around his neck, yanking him down and squeezing before he'd taken two steps. Rhys yelped but quickly recognized the arms holding him and the brown hair that was tangled in his face. “Vaughn?”

“You made it back, bro! Holy shit!” Vaughn squeezed him again and moved back, pulling Rhys by the wrist to give the crew room to get off the ship. They shot curious looks at Vaughn but his eyes were trained on Rhys, wide and happy. “I can't believe you made it back.”

Rhys laughed and tousled Vaughn's hair. “Of course I did. I told you I would.”

“You didn't _know_ that. Besides, after all that stuff with the vault,” Vaughn shook his head, breathing out a long sigh of relief. “Yvette and I thought they might murder you for doing that to Handsome Jack.” He paused, eyes darting around the landing bay. “He . . . he _is_ dead, right? You weren't exaggerating about that?”

Rhys looked at the crew coming off the ships, unloading equipment and taking inventory. He moved Vaughn farther from the crowd, into a little corner against the wall. Yvette was nowhere to be seen but Rhys had glimpsed the clock in the ship. It was the middle of the work day on Helios.

“Yeah,” Rhys said, looking at Vaughn again. “Handsome Jack got locked in the vault. No one could break into it without my help, and, well.” He shrugged. “There was a vault monster. The crew didn't want to risk facing one down just for Jack's sake.”

Vaughn scoffed, shaking his head. “As soon as Jack can't shoot them for saying no, they all turn on him.”

“It doesn't help that we'd all been out there for weeks and everyone was exhausted.” He looked over the landing bay again, blinking slowly. “I'm not sure it's sunk in for them, honestly. Jack used to go weeks or months without staying at Helios station. I think they'll _probably_ want to attack me for basically murdering him but they're all shocked right now. Plus, I did make it seem like an accident.”

“Seem?” Vaughn asked, brow raised.

Rhys shrugged and put a hand on his shoulder again, squeezing. “We've got a lot to talk about but I'd rather not do it here. Where's Yvette?”

“Still at work, but she said she'll meet us at our place after she's done.” Vaughn patted Rhys' hand and started toward the loading bay exit. “You're right, there's a lot to catch up on.”

Rhys looked at the crew, distracted with the task of cleaning up after the trip, and hurried after Vaughn, heels clicking and tattoos thrumming.

 

* * *

 

The news of Handsome Jack was probably meant to be kept a secret, hidden under the wrappings of corporate control until the board of directors could reveal it to Hyperion collectively with a solemn promise to do better for the company in the future and honor Jack's memory in the best ways that they could by seeing to it that Hyperion continued on, strong in the face of difficulties.

But this was Hyperion, and it didn't work that way.

Someone somewhere let slip that Handsome Jack had been left to die in a vault on Pandora, and the news spread worse than a wildfire in a hayfield. Rhys was fairly sure it hadn't been Vaughn or Yvette; they liked gossip but they weren't blabbermouths, and they both knew when something was best left quiet. Rhys was willing to bet one of the more bitter biologists had complained to a friend who spread it to a friend, et cetera.

It didn't really matter who started it, anyway, because within three days all of Helios knew and the board of directors was struggling to keep everything in control. Four people had been killed already and the bullet for the next one was probably already loaded on someone's belt.

Rhys kept a low profile. He spent the day they got back relaxing in the apartment and relaying all the details to his friends. The day after that ended sharply in the afternoon when one of the executives knocked on Rhys' door to tell him that corporate wanted a word with him about the vault, and about Jack.

It wasn't unexpected, and Rhys went, sitting at a long table with the executive who’d called him, staring down a video conference feed of the other seven people in charge of Helios in Jack’s absence.

Rhys was careful to outline every situation as though it had been as out of his hands as possible. He couldn't control his siren powers (true) and he hadn't expected them to find a vault monster (true). He'd tried to save them both (true) and he'd ended up with no choice but to leave Jack and save himself before he was blown to smithereens (false). Rhys had struggled to make sure he didn't stutter and give away the lie.

They all seemed very interested in his claims to siren powers, and Rhys took a few minutes to show them off, letting his tattoos glow and shimmer, his ECHO eye whirring with fresh electricity humming in its core. They tried to ask him questions about that, too, but Rhys insisted he knew very little about how it worked, that if he'd known better he would have been able to save Jack. The executives grumbled and eyed him curiously through the monitor and Rhys just shrugged, letting his power flow out through his fingers and fade from his skin.

When he got home again he was exhausted and collapsed on his bed, not waking up again for another twelve hours.

The last issue to deal with was his job.

There were a lot of ways to climb the ranks in Hyperion. Actual work, which tended to be a slow and painful process. It usually wound up with someone dead at the end of it because people knew they’d gotten to their position too honestly to know how to defend themselves from a bullet. There was backstabbing and scheming, which worked better but heightened the risk of being shot in the face or out of an airlock. And there was networking until everyone in the relevant departments liked you enough to not want to shoot you.

Rhys was decent at backstabbing and even better at doing actual, quality work. Networking left something to be desired, but he was about to fix that.

He breathed in slowly and knocked on the door of his boss' office. “Hello?” he asked, poking his head inside. “Henderson?”

“Huh? Oh, Rhys!” Henderson looked up from his desk, jolting like a startled rabbit. He had the kind of look to him where it was obvious that he'd collapse if you so much as breathed on him, and there were always five or ten empty cups of coffee on his desk at any given time. “Come in, come in, uh, you're . . .” He paused, the words disappearing. His eyes shuffled around the room and settled on the only chair across from his desk. He gestured to it vaguely. “Well, have a seat. What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to talk,” Rhys said slowly, closing the door behind him. “About my job.”

“Right, yeah, your job.” Henderson spoke distractedly, flipping papers on his desk and sliding them around into piles, looking for something. “What about it?”

Taking the offered seat that looked ready to collapse into a pile of wood and cushioning any second, Rhys said, “I was away for a month, on Pandora.”

“You were? Oh, wait.” Henderson stopped in his paper rustling and blinked. Rhys was wearing his usual button down shirt under his vest with the missing sleeve to show off his metal arm, but the other sleeve was pinned at the elbow, revealing his siren tattoos to the world. He'd also undone the top button to show off the ones on his chest. It felt good not to be constantly doing make-up every morning, to get up and not need to spend twenty minutes caking himself for the long work day.

Henderson stared like he'd been presented with a three headed dog and was contemplating the existence of Hades. He blinked again, and met Rhys' eyes. “You're a siren now.”

“Always was,” Rhys corrected. “It just became more obvious on our little expedition. You heard about Handsome Jack, I assume?”

“Yeah, the board of directors are scrambling to get somebody in his seat.” Henderson glanced at the wall, where his college degree hung crookedly in a plain wooden frame. Most people didn't bother to hang them up, but when your own merits weren't obvious it was better to show off as much as possible. “Why?”

“Partly just making conversation, but,” Rhys leaned back, putting his hands behind his head, “it made me start thinking about what I do. Did you still need that PA? To manage your workload?”

Henderson raised a brow and glanced down at his desk, papers scattered across the top, pens sitting in discarded piles. “I could,” he said slowly. “I was considering Vasquez for the position. I thought you liked data mining, anyway.”

Rhys could feel the faint pulse of his tattoos and remembered what it was like, to sit down at his desk every morning and let himself jump into the system, weaving like an electric current through numbers and bytes. It had been tiring and exhilarating, to control the inside of the system and bend it like hot iron to his will.

But he also remembered the call of Pandora, a cry of thousands who needed to escape the corporate claws sinking into the planet's surface.

Breathing out, Rhys said, “I'm good at it, but it's not fulfilling anymore. And I think helping you out would be a good way to use my time and improve my skills.” He dropped his hands and extended one until it rested on Henderson's desk, tapping the papers. “These, I'm sure, are taking up a lot of your time.” As he touched them, he pushed a little bit of energy out, letting it run across his tattoos until they glowed a subtle but distinct blue, lighting up the surface of Henderson's desk and reflecting off his computer's keyboard. “I think my particular skillset would be very useful in organizing your schedule and handling the worst of your papers. It'd be an honor if I could help you, sir.”

Henderson's eyes were on Rhys' tattoos, their blue glow reflected off his glasses. He slid his gaze up Rhys' arm slowly, over his shoulder and down to his chest where his shirt was parted and the tattoos shone like a small beacon. “I'll, uh, consider you,” he said, swallowing as he met Rhys' eyes, his own shaking like a deer in the headlights. “Vasquez sent me his resume . . .”

“Mine is already in your email,” Rhys said simply, and it wasn't, but it would be in the few seconds it took Rhys to access Helios' system remotely, tattoos brightening just slightly and ECHO eye glowing. Thankfully Henderson's attention had slid back to Rhys' hand and the way the tattoos patterned it like a circuit board, tracing the images with his eyes. “Is there anything else you need from me to consider me for the position, sir?”

“Um . . .” Henderson blinked and shook his head, like he was waking from a trance. “Uh, no, that– that's it, Rhys, thank you.” He leaned back, forcing himself to look at Rhys' face. “I'll look at your resume and let you know.”

“Thank you.” Rhys stood slowly, making his tattoos brighten one last time as he turned and left the office.

Henderson's PA wasn't a glamorous job, but it was another step on the ladder.

Rhys knew how to use his siren powers now. Not perfectly, but he could control them better, feeling the roar of the vault monster in the back of his mind and the core of Pandora ringing in his soul. It wouldn't be long before he was near the top and he finally had the power to go back to Pandora and order the machines to stop, the mining to end, and let the people rebuild their lives.  


End file.
